Meat Inspection : Not Kosher, Says County of State Plan

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday rejected Orange County participation in a state-financed, 18-month program under which county agricultural inspectors would check for misrepresentation of kosher meats and poultry in local meat markets.

The board unanimously voted against accepting $10,800 it would have received between now and July, 1988, to administer a local program after agreeing that county inspections of kosher meat would be mixing government and religion.

“It is an infringement on the mandate of the Constitution where the state should not interfere with religion,” Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder said after she successfully urged her colleagues to turn down a role in a pilot program mandated by the Legislature.

Supporters of state-financed inspections of kosher products criticized the board for misinterpreting the program’s intentions.

Started in Los Angeles

“We wanted to make sure that if a consumer was to buy kosher, he would get kosher,” Kip Wiley, legislative consultant to Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), said in a telephone interview. Hayden introduced legislation in 1985 that established a successful kosher meat inspection pilot program in Los Angeles County.

“This is a matter of protecting consumers,” Wiley said. “However, this does not give the state’s stamp of approval on what is or what is not kosher.”

Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, in supporting Wieder, denounced the program as “a very dangerous form of political opportunism on the part of Tom Hayden.”

Kosher food is slaughtered according to ritual and humane requirements of Jewish law.

In September, 1986, the Legislature appropriated $100,000 to expand the Los Angeles County pilot program to five other counties, including Orange, that have significant Jewish populations.

But Rabbi Henri E. Front of Huntington Beach told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that the program was “a waste of taxpayers’ money.”

“This is not an issue of consumer protection,” Front said. “It has no valid jurisdiction in the eyes of those of Jewish faith.”

But state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles) said the program has nothing to do with government interference with religion.

“This was a measure to guarantee truth in advertising,” he said. “The board is going to have a little problem with the people who are going to be very upset by this. This is going to bounce right back at them.”

Rosenthal, who introduced the legislation in Sacramento establishing the expanded six-county program, said in a telephone interview that he would speak to the state attorney general to see whether the Board of Supervisors can legally refuse the state funds to set up the program in the county. County Counsel Adrian Kuyper told the supervisors that they were empowered to reject the money.

Rabbi David Eliezrie, of the Chabad of Anaheim, a strong supporter of the program, said: “All major Jewish organizations in California have supported this consumer-protection measure. Most amazing, even groups like the American Jewish Congress, the Community Relations Committee of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation and JPAC--the Jewish Public Affairs Committee, which represents the organized Jewish community in Sacramento, including all of the Jewish Federations throughout the state--supported this bill.”

Unaware of Vote

Eliezrie, who has supervised a number of kosher functions at Orange County hotels, said, “The Orange County Jewish community was unaware of the supervisors’ vote, and I hope that once the board becomes aware of the community’s view on the issue, that they will reconsider their decision and act in a more affirmative way.”

There are two kosher meat markets in Orange County: Fairfax Kosher Meat Market in Los Alamitos and Sam’s Kosher Meat Market in Garden Grove, said Richard Le Feuvre, county deputy sealer of weights and measures.

The program would have required that agricultural weight and measures inspectors, who now check meat scales and other measurement instruments, look at records for kosher meat markets to make sure that the meat they sell is authentic.

George Hall, Los Angeles County chief of weights and measures, said county inspectors there check inventories against receipts to make sure they balance.

“There is a paper work trail in kosher meats and poultry, so we check on them to make sure there isn’t a mismatch in how much meat was purchased and how much meat was sold,” Hall said.

When there is a difference, there is a likelihood that non-kosher meat has been purchased instead, Hall said.

Rabbis Inspect Markets

Sam Snofsky, owner of Sam’s Kosher Meat Market, said in an interview that rabbis already inspect kosher meat markets effectively.

“Personally, I don’t think these inspectors would know what to look for. Inspecting kosher meat requires a lot of education,” Snofsky said. “Ticket receipts would only show that we bought kosher meat, but it wouldn’t show dates of purchase. The rabbis here have checked on us for years, and they do well.”

There has always been interest among Jewish groups for some kind of regulation of kosher food, Rosenthal said. The proposed county program would just make sure that butchers and other sellers do not cheat consumers, Rosenthal said.

“Since the county is unwilling to go along with the program, the state inspectors will probably do the checking themselves instead of the county,” Deputy Director of Food and Agriculture Hans Van Nes said in an interview.

Under the legislation, the state Department of Food and Agriculture is responsible for making sure that inspectors check kosher meat markets’ records, Van Nes said.

Times staff writer Mark I. Pinsky contributed to this story.