History
In the 1980s Aaron Rubashkin, a Lubavitcher Hasidic butcher from Brooklyn, decided to take advantage of economic structural changes to bring mass-production to the kosher meat production business. In 1987 he bought an abandoned slaughterhouse outside Postville, a town undergoing a major employment crisis in northeastern Iowa and opened a processing plant creating some 350 jobs. Two of his sons were put in charge, Sholom Rubashkin, the second youngest as CEO, and Heshy Rubashkin, the youngest, as vice president of marketing and sales. In 1992, Agriprocessors added poultry to its offerings. At its peak the plant employed over 800 people, killing more than 500 head of cattle each day in kosher production. The sales, according to numbers given to Cattle Buyers Weekly, rose from $80 million in 1997 to $180 million in 2002 and may have reached $250 million or more.
Rubashkin brought modern industrial methods to what has historically been a small, almost boutique craft, developing retail-ready glatt kosher products being sold both in supermarkets and in small, local grocery stores and meat markets around the United States. Agriprocessors was the largest (glatt) kosher meat producer in the United States and the only one authorized by Israel's Orthodox rabbinate to export beef to Israel.
In the 20 years it operated in Postville, Agriprocessors had a major impact on the town, creating new jobs, attracting immigrants from many different countries, and bringing an influx of ultra religious Jews to a part of the United States where Jews had been practically unknown.
The Rubashkin family opened another processing plant for bison, cattle and lamb called Local Pride Plant in conjunction with the Oglala Lakota native-American tribe of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Gordon, Nebraska in 2006 employing some 100 locals. The presence of the plant near an Indian reservation provided considerable tax breaks for Rubashkin. Governor Dave Heineman presented a $505,000 gratuity check to Rubashkin on behalf of the city of Gordon, as part of an incentive package that brought the factory to the town.
Agriprocessors had two distribution sites, one in Brooklyn, New York, and one in Miami, Florida, both managed by members of the Rubashkin family. It also operated slaughter facilities in South America.
Read more about this topic: Agriprocessors
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