Keeping Kosher At Agriprocessors:
Humane Treatment of Animals and People

By Rabbi Asher Zeilingold

Each year, I make several trips to visit food plants in Mexico to check that they are following kashrut. I fly into El Paso, Texas, and drive a few short miles over a bridge into Mexico. I am very familiar with the squalor and misery in which a sizable portion of the Mexican working class lives. The Forward described scenes that reminded me of what I saw in Mexico, not what I expected to see in the Midwestern United States. As we drove into Postville, I suspected a portion of what had been reported was true. I just hoped it was a small portion.

What I saw shocked me, but not for the reasons I expected. Instead of even finding a modicum of truth, I found the Forward’s claims to be completely unfounded and without basis in reality. Instead of third-world conditions, Dr. Carbonera and I found workers who were happy, satisfied, and felt their lives had meaning and fulfillment at Agriprocessors.

In a plant that employs roughly 800 people, you will inevitably find people who are not satisfied with their jobs. With the assistance of PETA, which is opposed to kosher slaughter in general, and the union organizers who had targeted Agriprocessors, the Forward described a fictional Agriprocessors, certainly not the plant we found in Postville.

The Forward criticized Agriprocessors over wages, housing options, the availability of other employment, health care for its workers, employee training, workplace conditions and its treatment of its Hispanic employees. Dr. Carbonera and I asked the employees and community leaders their view on all of these topics and added a few of our own—the effect employment at Agriprocessors had on immigrant families and the impact Agriprocessors has had on Postville and Northeast Iowa. Here is what we found:

WAGES: The employees we interviewed felt they were paid fairly and are using their wages to bring their families to the United States and build their own homes. Not surprisingly, everyone wanted to be paid more. But all felt their wage was fair. Many of the people we interviewed had worked elsewhere in the meat industry and had moved to Postville because of the opportunities provided by Agriprocessors. There was not the slightest indication that anyone we interviewed ever felt their paychecks had been short-changed. Quite the contrary, the people we talked agreed that hard work was recognized and that if you earned it, you would be rewarded at Agriprocessors. One of the people we interviewed did a rough calculation and told us his wages had increased by roughly a third in just a few years.

HEALTH CARE: Instead of contributing to the purchase of health insurance—as many U.S. workers do—most of Agriprocessors Hispanic employees save their money and take advantage of Postville’s free medical clinic. While the Forward failed to mention this service, the employees we interviewed all felt they had received good care and many felt they had a rapport with the clinic’s doctors.

HOUSING: While Postville faces a housing shortage, Agriprocessors’ employees still have a wide variety of housing options. Following in the footsteps of earlier U.S. immigrants, many of Postville’s Hispanic employees choose to share housing with relatives and friends and either send the savings to the families in their native countries or invest in further education or home-ownership. The Forward mentions Postville’s small trailer park, but fails to mention the Hispanic workers who have recently finished construction on their new homes. The Forward also neglected to mention Postville’s recently completed apartment buildings, where many Hispanic employees now live. Each of the buildings large units is equipped for satellite television and a soccer field for residents’ children was built as part of the complex.

EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES: Instead of workers chained to their stations, afraid of being replaced, we found a plant that was expanding production and regularly faced a shortage of employees. Several employees spoke of relatives and friends who had moved on from Agriprocessors to other jobs. And many of the people we interviewed cited Agriprocessors’ behavior when Iowa Turkey Processors (ITP), the other meat processing plant in Postville, burned to the ground in 2003, putting 300 employees, many of them Hispanic, out of work. Agriprocessors hired EVERY former ITP employee that applied for work.

WORKPLACE CONDITIONS: The only complaint raised by the people we interviewed was that Agriprocessors needed more physical space—production is growing and people feel cramped. The employees we interviewed had worked in meat processing plants before and felt the conditions at Agriprocessors were clean and sanitary. During our tour of the plant, we found this was in fact the case.

LABOR RELATIONS: Despite the claims made by labor organizers in the Forward, the employees we interviewed unanimously agreed that employees voted down the union, not out of fear of management, but out of fear of the impact the unions demands would have on the company. When asked about their biggest concern working for Agriprocessors, several employees cited the possibility that “troublemakers,” such as those working with the union, could cause enough trouble that the plant would have to close.

IMPACT ON AREA ECONOMY: The 2000 Census identified Postville as the fastest growing city in Iowa. Before Agriprocessors opened in 1987, Postville had been losing population for two decades. Now Agriprocessors is the largest employer in Northeast Iowa. In addition to the roughly 800 people employed by the plant, Agriprocessors has made a point of purchasing livestock from Iowa family farmers and has become an integral part of the agricultural economy in the region.

If you only listen to people with an axe to grind, even the most ideal workplace can come across as a shop of horrors. The Forward has done its readership—and the readership of those who reprint the Forward’s story—a disservice. And it has furthered the cause of those who would have government dictate how kashrut is conducted.

Instead of admonishing Agriprocessors to live up to its responsibilities as an employer, the Forward would be better served by examining its own responsibilities – to the truth.