nation / world
Can’t Find Passover Poultry? The
Kosher Chicken Shortage, Explained
JACKIE HAJDENBERG | JTA.ORG
T he reports are coming fast
and furious from the Costcos,
butcheries and grocery stores of
America: Kosher chicken is hard to find.

Facebook groups offer alerts when
shelves are restocked. Some stores are
limiting purchases; in others, cus-
tomers are policing each others’ carts,
looking for excessive stockpiling that
could shut themselves and others out.

While anyone who wants kosher
chicken at their Passover seder should
be able to get it, doing so might require
more effort, cost or compromise than
usual. That’s because an unusual array
of forces have conspired to depress
chicken production in the United
NAZARETH ORTHOPEDICS
Around the corner. Beyond expectations.

Chickens eat their feed at a poultry plant.
States, and kosher plants have suffered
alongside everyone else.

Here’s what you need to know about
the kosher chicken shortage.

Is there really less kosher chicken
available now than usual?
Yes. Many pressures on the chicken sup-
ply have contributed to less-than-aver-
age availability to farms, businesses
and the average consumer. These pres-
sures apply to non-kosher chicken, too,
but because there’s so much more of
that, produced over a wider number of
facilities, the effects have been blunter.

Overall, there’s definitely less kosher
chicken available right now than in
past years — but still enough that
everyone should be able to have what
they want, perhaps not at the price or
on the timeline they’d prefer.

THMA-937433516-NAZ What’s behind the shortage?
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nazarethhospital.org/ortho 2630 Holme Avenue, Suite 200
Philadelphia, PA 19152
215.335.6270 14
APRIL 14, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Today’s chicken supply has its roots
in what happened in March 2020 —
and new problems have emerged more
recently. A shortage of animals that set in
early on during the COVID-19 pan-
demic, when abrupt factory clo-
sures caused chickens and eggs to
be destroyed without being turned
into meat, resolved itself by about
September 2020, Yehudah Fink, direc-
tor of administration at David Elliot
Poultry, recalled last year.

But by then, the so-called Great
Getty Images
Resignation was already in full swing,
with many employers experiencing
unfilled or partially filled positions.

Even as Fink and others raised wages,
they could not operate their plants at
full capacity.

Fink planned to automate more of
his factories by this Passover to reduce
the need for workers, but he said that
wouldn’t make up for the labor short-
fall. And then came the avian flu.

The worst outbreak of avian flu since
2015 has decimated the non-kosher
chicken market, mainly in the Midwest
and on the East Coast. When a bird
flu outbreak occurs, any live birds that
might be affected are condemned. The
USDA has reported 22 million since
February, according to Reuters.

Even though the kosher poultry
farms have so far managed to avoid
the outbreak for the most part, they are
still affected. In normal times, when
a farm is short on live birds, they can
purchase more from another hatchery.

How is Passover affecting the
kosher chicken supply?
Poultry consumption always increases
during the Passover season, as people
buy chicken for their seders and the
duration of the holiday. Festive meals
for observant Jews traditionally feature
meat on the menu.

For the last two years, people have
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