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Why Does that Chicken Cost So Much?

Illustration photo

If it seems like the Chicken for Yomtov this year is nibbling away a much larger share of your food budget than usual – you are not hallucinating. In an interview with a local butcher, CrownHeights.info discovered what is behind the soaring prices.

There are two reasons for the sudden spike in prices:

1. A disease is going around the nation’s poultry farms, which – although harmless – causes chickens to become treif when infecting their arteries.

2. A major drought across the United States this summer has caused the price of corn – which is the main ingredient in animal feed – to soar due to severe shortages. This is also responsible for a rise in the price of beef.

Additionally, a Federal law which requires the conversion of a percentage of the corn harvest to ethanol is making the shortage much worse.

A letter, shown below, was sent to all the country’s Kosher butcher shops by Agri-Star on the first day of the month, informing them of across-the-board price hikes. They have also received similar letters from other Kosher meat and poultry providers, such as David Elliot, Empire, Marvid and several others.

If you were holding out on your chicken and meat purchases, waiting for the prices to come back down to earth – you may want to reconsider. The butcher said that he was told to expect yet another price increase on the first of October.

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13 Comments

  • DeClasse- Intellectual

    There are two important items missing in the above comunication: First, there is the law of supply and demand which affects the price–most often at the expense of the consumer.
    and, second, having being in this business for years, there is a general trend to raise the prices in order to obtain more profit and slush money to cover the slack periods of the year.
    As far as the other excuses of draught, etc, I am skeptical because the non-kosher products do not have this problem nor do they have such a price increase. I have not heard to the contrary–but I could be wrong–Empire may not be increasing its
    prices either (subject to change on notice.) even though empire has a record of uping the prices expecially before the two major Yom-Tovim of Rosh Hashona and Pesach.

  • shechita

    IS agri star a echsher for Lubavitchers?
    any Lubavitcher Rov is using it?
    differences meat or chickens?

  • moshe

    no need to be skeptical.
    just google chicken prices and you’ll see that they are up across the board in non-kosher markets.
    Wings are up 86% over last year for some wholesale markets.
    just eat less of it.

  • the real story

    I thought most of the meat under CHK was coming from
    South America and there is no drought there and marvid in canada does not have these problems as the american farms

    what is the real truth???????

  • Count your blessings

    Try shopping for your chicken in the UK. We pay around $11-$12 a kg all year round.

  • why so much fat?

    Why does the butcher leave on so much fat that we pay for, then need to cut off and throw out.

    Are there guidelines of how much they are allowed to leave on, or are they just trying to make a few more $

  • xguard

    they need to hire crossing guards…so that they can continue to have “Why did the chicken cross the road jokes”

  • shlomo as always with bad English

    on expensive Brighton non kosher beef cost like$1,29 for lb. non frozen fresh from a farm chicken breast from $0.49(amish) other NYC price for NONKOSHER chicken breast can start drom 29 cents
    so can some on from professional jevish liars can explain me a difference???

  • khalid

    the false propaganda of bird flu being dangerous for humans is the cause of rise of chicken price. the governments forcibly closed millions of small chicken farms throughout the world in the interest of big business houses. even millions of people, keeping chicken in their farms got panicky and stopped keeping them due to this false propaganda.this started a vicious cycle.