WARNING: Monsey, NY Butcher Sells Treifa Chicken as Kosher
Submitted by: Elan Kornblum, Publisher on Sep 4th 2006
For all those that do not know already, here is some information:

Monsey, NY - Shevach Meats who rented some space inside Hatzlacha grocery store in Monsey, NY was caught selling nonkosher (treifa) chicken as Kosher from Kiryas Yoel.

His, and the hashgacha's house of cards came falling down in the middle of last week, when one of the owners of the grocery was told by one worker of Kiryat Joel meat slaughterhouse offhand, that the butcher had not recieved a shipment of chicken from them in 3 weeks. But the owners realized that they had been selling Kiryas Joel chicken the entire time, so they got scared and called their hashgacha.

The Mashgichim broke into the butcher's cooler at night and found 19 cases of unmarked chicken, they tasted the skin and it did not taste salty at all. Also did they found that the kidneys were still intact, which on kosher chicken shouldn't be, since it's removed before salting.

At that time they called in the butcher who insisted it was Empire chicken. They checked with an Empire Mashgiach who lives in Monsey who told them that it isn't their kosher chicken.

He was immediately ejected from Hatzlacha, as the investigation continued, more came out and it was discovered that for at least 6 months he had been selling twice as much meat retail as he had bought from known Shechita houses, not even counting what he had sold wholesale to halls, yeshivas etc.

Furthermore, some people had noticed for months that the chicken was less salty than usual, when they asked the butcher about it, he told them that they are using a new low sodium salt in the kashering process, which was false, and that may also extend to meat too.

H'Rav Weissmandel put out a letter advising everyone to kasher all their keilim.

Reply #1 submitted by: GreenbaumM on Sep 15th 2006
Rabbi Yisroel Belsky has paskened that there is no need to kasher any keilim.He based his psak on the following. First, if Tumah is hutra b'tzibur than he said it is a kal v'chomer that non kosher meat is also hutra b'tzibur. Secondly, rabbi Belsky stated that he knows the owner of thebutcher store and that he is certainly an "ish neeman" and therefore the rule of "eid echad neeman b'issurin" applies. Rabbi Belsky stated that many companies and hotels under the OU are beleived to have purchased meat from that store owner and that he feels there is no problem and no need to kasher.