Group proposes symbol reflecting workplace conditions to join kosher labels

SAN JOSE, Calif. — From potato chips to brisket, Jews who keep kosher scan groceries for telltale letters — K, OU, KAJ — promising that the food meets Jewish dietary laws.

Now a major Jewish body wants to add a new symbol signaling not how the food was prepared, but how the workers who handled it were treated.

The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism is drawing up standards for a proposed "hekhsher tsedek" — or righteous certification — indicating that employees worked in safe factories and weren't exploited, among other things. The certification would supplement — not replace — the kosher certification.

"No one in the Jewish world has ever really tried to marry the socially responsible laws of how we treat workers with the laws of how we should eat," said Rabbi Morris Allen, who heads the committee studying the new certification.

"We were so concerned that the animal is slaughtered in the most humane way that we overlooked the person standing right next to it," he said.

The move gained momentum after a May article appeared in the Forward, a national Jewish newspaper, describing the long hours, unsafe working conditions and exploitation of employees at a kosher meatpacking plant in Iowa.

"She has worked 10- to 12-hour night shifts, six nights a week," said the Forward story, describing one of the immigrant workers. "Her cutting hand is swollen and deformed, but she has no health insurance to have it checked. She works for wages, starting at $6.25 an hour and stopping at $7, that several industry experts described as the lowest of any slaughterhouse in the nation."

The article prompted the New York-based United Synagogue to investigate. The slaughterhouse has since told United Synagogue it is reviewing some of the concerns.

If the certification is adopted, it would join the growing movement of socially conscious shopping, from free-trade coffee to conflict-free diamonds.

Allen thinks the labeling would entice Jews and non-Jews, the same way Ben & Jerry's attracted an ice-cream-buying public willing to pay a premium for fanciful flavors sprinkled with progressive practices.

Already, kosher food is typically pricier than its conventional counterpart. At Empire Kosher, for instance, the 100,000 chickens processed daily must be killed by hand under the supervision of a rabbi. The bird is put into a water bath, salted to draw out all the blood and rinsed. All those steps increase time and cost.

Jews draw their dietary rules from the Torah, though there is great interpretation on certain aspects of kosher.

The certification committee hopes to finalize its guidelines this winter, which then must be approved by rabbis and United Synagogue, the association that authorized the committee and represents the nation's Conservative synagogues. The certifications could start as soon as next year.

It's unclear how prevalent they will be. Empire Kosher won't decide whether to pursue the certification until it learns more about specific requirements or the intended market.

There are other logistics. Though some Conservative rabbis approve food and restaurants, United Synagogue does not have a formalized operation such as the Orthodox Union, whose OU symbol is found on 400,000 kosher products.

Allen acknowledged that any hekhsher tsedek certification would unfold in stages across the United States, unrolling perhaps in kosher meat plants and then kosher bakeries.

The Orthodox Union has no plans to create a workplace certification.

"It's not that we don't care about those issues, but we rely on the federal government," said Rabbi Menachem Genack, rabbinic administrator for the OU's kashrut, or kosher, division. He noted that agencies such as the Department of Labor and Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) already keep watch on workers' pay and working conditions.