K A S H R U T . C O M_©

Empire bills its 330,000-square-foot plant in Mifflintown, Pa., about 40 miles west of Harrisburg, as the world's largest kosher food processing facility. The plant's 1,200 workers, including 80 rabbis, process 120,000 chickens and 15,000 turkeys per day into kosher raw and cooked products, including hot dogs, luncheon meats,turkey pastrami and deli foods. In addition, Empire markets a co-packed line of kosher pizzas, blintzes, egg rolls and other products.

With $125 million in sales last year, the company claims an 80 percent market share for its poultry among Jewish consumers who keep kosher - its core clientele. Empire officials are looking to expand beyond this base by educating general consumers about the benefits of kosher processing.

"We fit perfectly into the superpremium category," says company president Michael Strear."Our standards are much higher than the average poultry processor's, and that's a fact." These standards derive from thousands of years of tradition, with their source in the five books of the Old Testament. In general, kosher, a Hebrew word meaning "fit" or "pure," denotes high standards of cleanliness for both beginning product and the processing environment.

Salting the chickens

Specifically, kosher poultry is treated with salt to draw out the bird's blood, consumption of which is forbidden under kosher law. The process also requires extra rinsing and forbids the use of hot water at any stage of processing. And all stages of slaughter and processing must be overseen by trained rabbis; at the Empire plant, some of the rabbis work almost side by side with USDA inspectors.

Not only do these elements satisfy religious requirements, they improve quality. "It's more than just rabbis blessing chicken," says Janice Lee Price, vice president of marketing. "That's the most common misconception -if it's kosher, [that means only that] it's been blessed. The real benefit is taste."

To get the word out, Empire has embarked on an aggressive promotional program to position kosher poultry as a premium item. Articles in Gourmet, Food & Wine, Saveur and other upscale food magazines have touted Empire's taste. Non-kosher consumers constitute 55 percent of Empire's clientele; in fact, sales of kosher products in general have increased 12 to 15 percent a year since 1992, according to Integrated Marketing Communications Inc., a New York-based consulting firm for the kosher industry. Empire officials realize they need to give as many consumers as possible a reason to spend more for their products. The requirements of kosher processing make it highly labor intensive, adding to the cost. In addition, the Jewish dietary laws, collectively known as Kashrus, force the rejection of a large amount of product that would be acceptable in a non-kosher plant.

"We understand our product costs more to manufacture," Strear says. "However, because we produce a superior quality product, Empire is positioned in the superpremium chicken category, where we expect to be competitively priced."

Producing kosher product brings another imperative: a demand for flexibility. Because Empire services so many small, specialty butcher shops and stores, it must be able to translate orders into production scheduling very quickly.

Kosher cuts

The process starts with slaughtering, which has to be done according to kosher principles; unlike conventional slaughter, it must be done by hand, and the birds may not be rendered unconscious first. They are unloaded onto belt conveyors and picked up one at a time by a worker who holds them while a shochet, a specially trained slaughterer, slices their necks with a blade of prescribed sharpness. "Orthodox Jews consider this to be the only humane method of slaughter, because the bird is literally dead before it feels pain," says James Reed, chief operating officer. Rabbis reject about 0.7 percent of the birds at slaughter for visible injuries or other violations of Kashrus.

Inspection by trained rabbis is one of the important differences between kosher and regular processing

The slaughtered birds are placed upside down into metal funnels on a chain conveyor. The blood drains down the funnel into troughs iilled with sawdust. The sawdust is another religious requirement; under Kashrus, the birds' blood must drain "onto earth." (The sawdust is sold to a renderer.) The birds then are shackled and put through a series of feather pickers. Removal of feathers is especially problematic for kosher plants, because Kashrus forbids the use of heated water in processing. The birds must go through eight defeathering machines that use cold water, each of whose rubber fingers use different motions. Even so, many feathers and pinfeathers remain; Reed says that about 70 workers downstream of evisceration are devoted entirely to removing residual feathers. The feet ("paws" in industry parlance) are automatically cut off, dropping the birds onto a belt conveyor. Reed estimates that because of the requirements of kosher processing, Empire's evisceration line is about twice as long as that of a non-kosher plant of comparable size. Workers re-hang the birds on one of four shackle lines (one is for turkeys). They then go through a series of rotary evisceration and cutting machines, much as in any high-volume poultry plant. These include venters, oil gland removers, and eviscerators from Stork RM8-Protecon Inc., Gainesville, Ga., that descend into the birds' cavities, draw out the viscera and drape them down the front for display.

Up to four percent of the product passes USDA inspection but is rejected by the plant's rabbis; much of this is sold

These are checked by two sets of inspectors: USDA personnel and rabbis, who look for imperfections of the internal organs. "Glatt kosher, "the highest designation under Kashrus, demands that lungs and other organs be completely free of lesions. Between 2 and 4 percent of the birds that pass USDA inspection get rejected by the inspecting rabbis on these grounds. Most of these are skinned, marked with a black tag and sold to non-kosher processors.

Workers harvest the heart, liver and gizzards. A Stork cropper takes birds onto another carousel, where descending augers open the head and neck cavities. Workers then hand-clip the tips of the wings so that the bone marrow, which contains blood, may drain-another requirement of kosher processing. A Stork rotary vacuum sucks out the lungs. More workers tend the shackle line, cutting off crops and other areas where pinfeathers remain.

Vacuuming follows evisceration

"We take a lot of yield loss in order to have a better product," Reed says. Workers hand-vacuum the birds' interiors to remove the kidneys, another kosher requirement. After an inside-and-outside washing, the birds are ready for soaking and salting.Empire pays as much attention to its workers' welfare as it does to its birds'. Jobs are divided into red, yellow and green classifications, according to the amount of repetitive-motion stress they involve. Workers are not allowed to do red tasks for more than two hours at a time, with a company nurse roaming the lines to keep track of assignments. Since this program was instituted three-and-a-half years ago, Reed says, lost-day incidents have plunged by 97 percent. This may play a role in Empire's annual lineworker turnover of about 22 percent, which is less than one-quarter the industry average.

Soak, salt, soak

Two large soakers hold about 6,500 birds

Salting is another of the important differences between kosher and regular processing

each for about 30 minutes in water at 50 to 55 F, as prescribed under Kashrus. Workers then hand-shackle the birds onto one of three salting lines. The bodies hang long enough so that their surfaces are tacky but not wet, ensuring that the salt will adhere but not dissolve. The birds drop off the shackle line and down chutes to the salting tables. Workers place each bird in a trough of coarse salt and generously rub them inside and out. About seven tons of salt a day falls to the floor during this process; Empire donates it to local municipalities for use on roads during winter. Workers place the salted birds into huge inclined bins that carry them forward slowly, letting them sit about an hour before rinsing.

This salting is one of the most distinctive features of kosher processing. The purpose of the salt is to draw out the birds' blood, which Orthodox Jews may not eat. Salting has the added benefits of evening out the birds' moisture, tenderizing their flesh, and creating a hostile environment for microorganisms.

"We put out poultry here that has the lowest microbial load of any in the country," Reed says proudly. Because the salt remains on the birds' surface and is thoroughly rinsed off, it does not affect the flavor.

After the birds drop out of the salting bins, they go through shower baths. Augers then carry them through large troughs of water chilled to 34 F. This is the equivalent of the chiller bath that, in non-kosher plants, is located directly after evisceration.

Deboning follows a procedure similar to most high-volume poultry plants

"In an ordinary plant, this water [in the chillers] would be blood-red," Reed says. "It's so much cleaner here."

Iced, chilled, IQF

Deboning and packaging are the next steps. Empire's output can be divided roughly into three categories: ice-packed parts and whole birds for butchers and specialty stores, chill-packed cuts for groceries and supermarkets, and IQF parts for club stores. For cut-up product, about 70 percent of the total, one of two automatic cutting machines takes the birds over a series of blades, reducing each one to eight pieces.

Reed likes to refer to this part of the plant as "the world's largest butcher shop." Because kosher chicken is such a specialty item, Empire must handle many small orders and demands for specialized cuts from kosher butchers, yeshivas and other niche customers. Handling and filling them requires a great deal of flexibility.

Empire attains this flexibility in part with a sophisticated system for tracking orders, inventory and production. As orders come in, they are logged into a software application from The Foxboro Co., Foxboro, Mass. It translates the orders into production requirements and routes parts from the automatic cutters to different packaging areas, according to how many of each kind of cut are needed. Other software prints bar-code labels for pallets of product. Forklift trucks equipped with radio-frequency equipment feed into the Foxboro system to make it keep track of shipmenta sent.

Kosher market on the rise Large-scale kosher processors like Empire realize that their financial well-being depends on expanding the market for kosher food beyond their base of observant Jews. Fortunately for them, the kosher market has been growing fast. Integrated Marketing Communications, a New Yorkbased consulting firm for the kosher market, recorded sales of $3.25 billion for kosher food in the United States in 1997, with a growth rate of 12 to 15 percent a year. Integrated also does KosherFest, a yearly trade show devoted to kosher products, in which exhibitors have nearly quadru- pled since the first show in 1990. For industrially processed food to be certified as kosher, it must be produced in facilities under the scrutiny of properly trained rabbis. More than 300 agencies can provide inspection and kosher certification. Empire uses the services of the largest one, the Orthodox Union. There are more than 40,000 kosher-certified products in the market today, up from 18,000 10 years ago. Many of these products are mainstream foods, such as Oreo cookies and Milky Way bars. For these, kosher certification is mainly a way of reassuring observant Jews that the ingredients don't come from forbidden sources.

Chill-packed product goes through a chiller that reduces ita temperature to between 34 and 38 F. In a room kept at 26 F-the lowest temperature at which poultry still can be labeled "fresh"-workers deposit the pieces in trays, put them through a shrinkwrapper from Ossid Gorp., Rocky Mount, N.C., then hand-rack them and put the racks in a blast chiller at OF to further chill the product to 26 F. The packages then are taken out of the racks, hand-cased and stored at 26 F until shipped.

Parts for club stores are injected with brine by a machine from Wolfking Inc., Blacklick, Ohio. They get quick-frozen by a cryogenic freezer from the Liquid Carbonic division of Praxair, Oak Brook, ill. Workers pack them into club-store sacks and hand-case them.

Empire's quality lab does standard microbiological tests, including total plate counts, coliforms, E. coli and Listeria. Reed is especially proud of the fact that the company's cooked products are never released until they clear Listeria testing- "All we have is our name," he says. "If people start thinking of kosher as something that could be suspect, we would be out of business."