By:REBECCA SHALOMOFF
Customers lining up for Monday night's famous rib eye special at King David on Central Avenue in Cedarhurst were disappointed to find out that it was taken off the menu because no meat - other than chicken - was delivered to the kosher restaurant this week.
The meat shortage saga striking this local shop days before Passover, as well as kosher delicatessens and markets nationwide, began when a fire destroyed a meat processing plant in Kansas last December. Overseas cattle disease and a self-imposed ban on beef exports by the Argentine government also contributed to the decline in kosher meats feeding thousands of Jewish families.
"The meat is totally unavailable," said Francis Ross, manager of King David. "And we are told that the situation is getting worse."
Ross, who is still awaiting meat delivery from wholesale kosher distributors in Brooklyn, expects that prices will surge. They have already gone up for baloney, hot dogs and especially brisket, which is the popular meat for the Passover table.
The December fire destroyed the ConAgra Beef processing plant in Garden City, Kan., one of the largest kosher slaughterhouses nationwide. The plant is the owner and main supplier to Hebrew National Foods, which fills more than half the country's kosher brisket demand. Many of those processors have relied on beef from Argentina until the imports were banned last August to prevent foot-and-mouth cattle disease from hitting America.
Many observers of Passover, an eight-day holiday which begins sundown on Saturday, April 7 and commemorates the Jews escape from years of Egyptian enslavement, depend on a good-size slab of beef roasting in the oven with potatoes, carrots and onions, while the traditional story is told around the table. This Jewish holiday season is the busiest for the kosher food industry. Families stock up on matzoh, macaroons and of course, meat. The circumstances leading to this crisis could not have come at a worse time, meat shopkeepers said.
When one Lawrence resident found out about the beef shortage, she panicked. "I forced my husband to go to Super Sol on Saturday night for brisket," she said.
But shoppers at Super Sol and Chap a Nosh, both located on Central Avenue, and Gourmet Glatt on Spruce Street have not encountered a meat shortage or price shock.
"We are affected by a rise in prices, but as a courtesy to the community, we are trying to absorb it," said Mark Bolender, owner of Gourmet Glatt. "And we have a good supply on hand."
Gourmet Glatt gets meat shipments from Iowa, Chicago and Baltimore, but not from the Kansas plant. ConAgra Beef does not meet the glatt kosher standards of Gourmet Glatt and Super Sol. Hebrew National Foods are not welcome in either local supermarket.
The hardest hit have been those stores and restaurants like King David and Ben's Deli, a chain of delicatessens around New York, that order specific cuts directly from suppliers. The larger meat shops and supermarkets normally order whole sides of beef at a time and do the butchering themselves.
"Don't worry," said Abe Hollander, manager of the Super Sol meat department. "There's no shortage here."
Rabbi Kenneth Hain of Congregation Beth Sholom in Lawrence said he hasn't really seen any evidence of a meat shortage either. "I spoke to a couple of people in the meat business and to butchers on Long Island and they seem to be amply supplied so far," Hain said. "It doesn't appear to be a crisis for us."
