In Argentina, a Jewish businessman starts a kosher meat price war
Image by Thinkstock
BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — The Jewish owner of a large Argentine hypermarket chain has started selling kosher meat for far less than competitors this month, claiming that the country’s kosher supervision industry has artificially driven up costs for consumers.
Roberto Goldfarb, the founder and CEO of Diarco, first announced his intentions in a call in May with El Lazo, a Jewish youth center associated with the Chabad Lubavitch movement. On the call he called the kosher supervision industry a “mafia” that cons buyers and charges more than necessary “with excess of weight, fat, bones.”
“I can sell a kilo of asado [a traditional Argentinian meat cut used in barbecuing] for 290 pesos and then someone comes to tell me that the price for the kosher asado has to be 800 pesos … I’m not going to accept that,” he said.
Earlier this month, Diarco stores began selling kosher meat for several hundred pesos less than the usual prices seen around the country. Goldfarb said some farmers have stopped working with him over the price decrease.
On Monday, Clarin, Argentina’s largest news site, chronicled the quarrel and quoted both Goldfarb and rabbis involved in the kosher supervision of meat.
Samuel Levin, a rabbi who works with the Gorina supervision group, said “I work with 30 people, 10 ‘shochatim,’ who are specialists. That’s why you pay.”
The Latin American Rabbinical Seminary based in Buenos Aires released a statement last week titled “Kosher means suitable, not expensive.” The statement was also signed by the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis.
“In recent decades, a brutal overpriced business has been generated in Argentina, in flagrant violation of Jewish Law and reasonable practices, based on the industry of rabbinical supervision of food. Rabbis have made people hostage of their ‘halachic’ decisions, and together with some businessmen they have created a mafia in the provision and price of Kosher food,” the statement reads.
Without mentioning Diarco, the statement ends saying that on behalf of both institutions, “We support and encourage any new initiative that, within the framework of Jewish Law, seeks to end abuses and help people.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
