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Friday February 18, 2005

Desperately seeking salami

Hunger for Hebrew National outstripping company’s production

by dan pine
staff writer

Where’s the beef?

For kosher salami lovers, that is the question as Hebrew National reports a national shortage of its most famous product, leaving some customers out in the cold (cut).

First global warming. Now this.

Corporate food giant ConAgra, which owns the venerable Hebrew National brand, says the scarcity is due to higher-than-usual demand and the slow start-up of a new processing plant in Massachusetts.

“At this point, we’ve been working very hard to increase production,” says ConAgra spokesperson Julie DeYoung. “We are for the most part filling orders on the most popular products. For the minor products, there will continue to be some shortages for a period of time.”

So far, the salami crisis has not slammed the Bay Area.

“We’re not having any problems with shortages of kosher meat products. We have all available salami for our kosher customers,” Queyen Ha, a spokesperson for Albertsons stores, told j.

At local kosher specialty markets, the story was the same. Says Sam Treistman of San Francisco’s Tel Aviv Strictly Kosher Market, “When people come in asking for [Hebrew National], we have a competitor: Sinai 48. People say it tastes much better. The shortage has not affected my business except it has increased my salami sales.”

Adds Rabbi Levy Zirkind of Vaad HaKashrus, Northern California’s kosher certifying agency: “I have heard nothing about it. In America, thank God, the kosher food scene has changed for the better. There’s a lot more of it and a lot more consumers.”

Overall, kosher products have experienced growing popularity in recent years, fueled in part by the belief that kosher products are healthier.

Rabbi Menachem Genack, the rabbinic administrator of the Orthodox Union’s kashrut division, says the increase may not have to do with an increasing number of people keeping kosher. “In terms of the general Jewish population, there is a precipitous demographic decline of our population, so in that respect there are less kosher consumers,” he says.

But Muslims who maintain halal diets, for example, can eat kosher meat. And people who are lactose intolerant often look for the parve label, indicating that no dairy or meat was used in making a particular product.

“The segment of the market that thinks kosher is an added value — that may be growing and that may be reflected in Hebrew National’s numbers,” Genack added.

Zirkind, however, isn’t much of a Hebrew National fan, especially since the company sold out to ConAgra in the early 1990s. “When they say they answer to a higher authority,” he says, “they mean the stock market.”

Chanan Tigay, a staff writer for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, contributed to the story.

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