Going kosher has become good business in China

Rabbi Shimon Freundlich picked up the phone in Beijing, and a Chinese factory boss launched into his pitch. He wanted to join the growing ranks of Chinese exporters who have earned a kosher seal of approval.

He promised to follow the rules and to welcome surprise inspections. So, the rabbi asked, what’s the product?

“Tables and chairs.”

Although more enthusiastic than knowledgeable, China’s factory owners are clamoring to go kosher. In an odd-couple embrace that only global commerce could produce, more than 2,000 Chinese plants have been certified in the last decade under Jewish dietary laws in hope of tapping a world trade sector estimated at $150 billion a year.

Among them, as many as 50 factories also have been certified to the stricter standard reserved for Passover, rabbis say.

China is churning out a growing list of kosher products, including candy, canned vegetables and unpronounceable enzymes. The New York-based Orthodox Union, which administers the largest kosher trademark, is on pace to double in one year the 300 plants it has certified in China.

“Every two weeks we get applications from 15 or 20 new plants,” said Union Rabbi Mordechai Grunberg, who oversees factories across China.

Until recently, China’s underdeveloped infrastructure made it nearly impossible for rabbis to crisscross the nations inspecting factories to ensure, for example, that there is no pork or shellfish anywhere near a production line.

Grunberg learned that lesson in 1981, when he visited Shanghai to inspect a citric-acid plant.

“I got to the hotel and I had no telephone, nobody spoke English, there was no contact to meet me, and there were rats,” he said. “I went right back to the airport and just waited for the flight back to New York.”

He did not set foot in China again for 21 years.

A link in supply chains

Today, Grunberg can journey to the Tibetan plateau to watch nomadic dairy producers and ensure that no milk is added from non-kosher animals. The next week, he can be in China’s frigid north, checking for insects in a garlic storehouse.

The sudden demand for certification also underscores China’s unique role in global supply chains. Shipments of frozen fish from Alaska and Greenland come to China for processing and kosher inspection, only to be shipped to the U.S. for sale.

In one case, Freundlich found himself at the crossroads of centuries-old tradition and 21st-century shipping: He faced thousands of pounds of Alaskan fish but had no way to know that each fish met the kosher standard of having fins and scales.

“I checked 37,000 fish, scraping each one with my fingernail, over three days,” said Freundlich, who moved to Beijing six years ago to found the Chabad Lubavitch of Beijing, an ultraorthodox synagogue and community.

China is discovering that going kosher poses particular challenges. There are only seven inspectors, or mashgiach, living full-time in China to perform meticulous factory visits, so back-up rabbis must fly in from New York, Tel Aviv and elsewhere.

There’s a steep learning curve for a nation less familiar with matzo balls than with sweet-and-sour prawns and savory pork. Although China had ancient communities of Jews and sheltered as many as 30,000 Jewish refugees during World War II, only about 3,000 Jews live in China today, rabbis say.

But factory owners say that a growing share of U.S. importers demand a kosher seal, which only a mashgiach can provide.

Even as the U.S. Jewish population declines through intermarriage and aging, a 2005 survey by market researcher Mintel International Group found that 15% of U.S. shoppers buy kosher food all the time, and an additional 58% occasionally do. Most are not Jews but tell pollsters that they consider most kosher food to be healthy and safer.

That’s enough to convince Hu Yalong.

“The Chinese people don’t know much about Jewish culture, but it doesn’t affect the fact that we still want to do business,” said Hu, general manager of Anhui Great Nation Essential Oils Co., which earned a kosher certificate last year for its peppermint-oil additives.

Waiting for ‘the rabbit’

Some cultural and language confusion is inevitable. When Avrom Pollak, the rabbi who heads Baltimore-based trademark Star-K, made his first trip to China more than 15 years ago, he visited some caffeine-factory officials who had a tenuous grip on the details of Judaism.

“As I was getting ready to leave, all the employees are standing around, and I could see they were expecting something,” the rabbi said. “Finally, they said they were waiting for ‘the rabbit.’ They had been told ‘a rabbit would be coming from the U.S.’ to see if they were kosher.”

Even today, some factories are puzzled that no matter what they do, they can’t be eligible.

“I have to tell them, ‘There’s no way to make a pork dim sum kosher,’ ” said Rabbi Amos Benjamin, a Shanghai-based Star-K inspector.

And Chinese suppliers often bridle at the notion that even after years of successful inspections, a rabbi will persist in making annual verification visits.

“They say, ‘I’m a nice guy and you can trust us.’ But we have to say, ‘Trust, schmust!’ ” Benjamin said.

One recent morning, 27-year-old Menachem Piekarski stepped off the plane in the southern city of Hangzhou, his brown velvet yarmulke and reddish-blond beard setting him apart. He scanned the crowd in the reception area and glimpsed a hand-written sign: “Mr. Rabbi.”

Two young representatives from an organic tea factory were there to greet him. No sooner were they in the car than Piekarski began his polite but firm questioning: Where does the tea come from? Do the machines produce anything but tea? Are they connected to any other factories?

Piekarski and his hosts roamed through the factory. He examined every machine and every storeroom. He sniffed the tea and scrutinized the boiler.

“How long can you keep tea?” he said of a dust-covered mound of leaves. “It looks like you have tea from the six days of creation.”

He peered into storehouses and asked more questions. He scribbled down temperatures and tonnages. With only one ingredient, it was a simple visit. Within a couple of hours, he was done. But assistant general manager Xie Kangfeng said he was eager to get a seal of approval for all of the company’s factories scattered across China.

“Can we do that today?” Xie asked Piekarski through an interpreter.

The factory was still figuring out how this works.

“We can’t certify a factory without visiting,” Piekarski said. “Not a chance in the world.”