Initial results of a survey by the retail kosher meat code authority in its efforts to avert a strike threatened by kosher meat retailers in protest against prevailing high wholesale prices yesterday revealed that the packing industry anticipates no price reductions for some time to come.
Meanwhile kosher butcher associations throughout the country joined the 5,000 butchers in the metropolitan area in an appeal to the code authority to take action to relieve the situation, which, they declared, is forcing them out of business.
MANY UNITS PROTEST
Among the organizations which yesterday joined the Federation of Kosher Butchers of Greater New York in protesting high wholesale prices of meat are: United Kosher Butchers of Massachusetts, the Federation of Kosher Butchers of New Jersey, United Kosher Butchers of Philadelphia, United Kosher Butchers of Baltimore, and the United Kosher Butchers of New Haven.
Representatives of these organizations and Charles Cohen, president of the New York Federation, have promised to hold off strike action until the code authority’s investigation is completed, David S. Andron, counsel for the Code Authority, announced yesterday.
Commenting on the initial results of the survey, and on the appeals which have come to the Code Authority from all parts of the country, Mr. Andron said, “the interests of the consumer will be protected at all costs.
FIGHTS HIGH PRICES
“The code authority is opposed to prices which are prohibitive to the kosher-buying public,” Mr. Andron said, “We intend to do everything in our power to protect the consumer, while seeing to it that the kosher meat retailer is enabled to make a fair and just profit.
“The Code Authority is hopeful of averting a butchers’ strike, which would work hardship on everyone concerned,” Mr. Andron stated.
Executives of the three major packing companies in this city and D. G. Cummings, head of the Department of Agriculture’s Livestock, Meat and Wool Information Service, all attributed current prices to three primary factors, drought, government buying of cattle and recent cold weather.
He presented the following figures to show how livestock prices on the Chicago market have increased in comparison with those of a year ago:
Jan. 26,1934 Jan. 26,1935
Steers $6.92 $11.78
Veal 6.85 9.40
Lamb 8.84 8.94
Prices have advanced steeply since January 26 of this year to the point where steers were bringing as much as $14 a head on the Chicago market yesterday, Louis Joseph of Wilson & Co., pointed out.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
