For more than 35 years Vineland Kosher has provided Kosher Poultry for those who demanded the highest and the strictest Kashrut. The leadership of the business has more than 100 years of combined experience in the Kosher Poultry Business. Using a special breed of chicken and our own formulation of feed our farmers produce the finest poultry for your table.

Vineland Kosher Poultry Inc. is under the strict rabbinical supervision of the Union of Orthodox Congregations of America (OU) and the Central Rabbinical Council (CRC / Rabbi Hillel Weinberger - Satmar)

Rabbi Israel Leifer
President of Vineland Kosher Poultry, Inc.

Kosher Poultry Slaughter

The Shochet [ritual slaughterer] drew the knife slowly down the edge of the nail of his little finger. He seemed to listen for any irregularities in the blade he had honed to a painless precision.

It had to be sharp and smooth. It must cause as little pain as possible to the birds in the next room. "Strictly kosher people don't eat any other chickens," said Esther Raab, co-owner of the business with her husband of 55 years, Irving. "For the big conventions, we send [the chickens] by air." Chickens killed in South Jersey have graced tables in Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, as well as countless kosher tables in the New York and Philadelphia areas.

According to Rabbi Menachem Genak of the Orthodox Union in New York City, Vineland Kosher Poultry is one of three slaughterhouses that cover 95 percent of the national market for kosher chickens. But it all starts with Amish farmers, Irving Raab said. They raise the chickens without antibiotics or growth hormones. And rabbis watch over the operation, early in the chicken's life. The rabbis go out to the farm to see the chickens vaccinated, and the needles should not touch bone and hurt the chicken.

Rabbi Israel Leifer, President of Vineland Kosher said "The slaughtering, based on Torah passages, is likewise meant to be considerate of the birds, which are six or seven weeks old when they are killed. To qualify as kosher poultry, birds must be healthy enough to have lived another year if they were not slaughtered. No ailing bird can qualify."

Each time a rabbi begins a new session of slaughtering, he prays silently over the first chicken. "He says a prayer that with God's permission he will kill the animal for human use. He must cut all the [blood] vessels on one side [of the neck], and if not, it's not kosher." After the rabbi's swift cut, the bird's windpipe must be visible or else it does not earn the kosher tag.

Once the chicken is killed, it is moved by conveyor belt through a maze of machines that remove its extraneous parts. The processing removes as much blood as possible from the birds.

"A Jew is not allowed to eat blood or use hot water in a scalder, which makes the blood coagulate," said Charlie Smith, who manages the processing. The birds are packed in salt for an hour to further draw out blood, rinsed three times to remove the salt, then packed in ice. Most are shipped to New York and Philadelphia. The process uses about 150 employees and 200,000 gallons of water a day.

The chickens that bear the kosher tag don't just have to pass inspection by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They have to get the approval of the rabbis, who check to be sure there are no irregularities in the bird's organs and that none of its bones have been broken.

"They're stricter than the USDA," Smith said. "If they look at a bird and see its wing was broken, they have to see if it happened before the bird was slaughtered or if it was done by the equipment. If it was broken beforehand, it's not kosher, because the bird died with pain."