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Rubashkin Kosher meat packing plant planned

An Iowa meatpacking firm that has drawn fire from an animal-rights group has bought an old packing plant in Gordon, Neb., and plans to process kosher beef, lamb and bison products using workers from the nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
If the plant passes a U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection scheduled for Friday it could begin slaughtering cattle as soon as Monday, according to Tally Plume, executive director of the Oglala Oyate Woitancan Empowerment Zone, which encompasses the reservation.
The firm, Local Pride, announced this week that it would begin hiring and training local workers for the plant. The plant will employ 40 to 50 local residents, according to a Local Pride news release. Plume said many of the workers would be tribal members.
Local Pride is owned by the Rubashkin family, which also owns Agriprocessors, operators of a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa.
Local Pride is working with the empowerment zone, created on the reservation in 1999, along with the Oglala Sioux Tribe Workforce in Action Program, the city of Gordon and the Nebraska Department of Agriculture.
Plume said the empowerment zone board expanded the zone, with USDA approval, to include 300 acres where the plant is located in Gordon, 36 miles southeast of Pine Ridge village.
Plume said the project considered Gordon for a site because the reservation lacks infrastructure to accommodate such a facility.
By being in the empowerment zone, Local Pride will be able to get a tax break for hiring tribal members, Plume said.
Reservation residents already have undergone training at the Postville plant.
"The potential for employment on this project could get pretty high," Plume said. He said the Postsville plant began with about 50 employees and now has 700 workers.
He said the agreement between Local Pride and the empowerment zone also would provide an opportunity to market cattle raised by Indian ranchers. He compared the project to a miniature version of the South Dakota Certified Beef program begun by the state this year.
"Our next step is to get our producers ramped up and involved in marketing fat cattle to the plant," Plume said.
The plant, previously operated by Premium Beef of Nebraska, has been closed for seven years. Local Pride has renovated the plant.
Meanwhile, Plume said he was not worried about allegations by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that Agriprocessors' Postville plant uses cruel slaughtering methods that violate federal rules and strict kosher slaughtering standards.
PETA cited a video secretly made by an activist working undercover at the plant that showed workers using large knives to slice cows' throats, as required for kosher preparation. The video also shows some of the cows then stumbling around for as long as three minutes. PETA says the animals were still alive and suffering.
Plant officials say the animals' movements are involuntary and that massive blood loss to the brain brought on by slitting their throats renders them insensitive to pain within seconds.
Two rabbis are in the slaughtering plant at all times and a rabbi delivers the first, ritual slice, according to a plant spokesman quoted in a December 2004 story in the Waterloo (Iowa) Courier by staff writer Dan Haugen.
The Courier also reported that USDA has launched an investigation into the PETA claims.
Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Patty Judge said after visiting the Postville plant last December that the animals killed there are treated humanely and die quickly, according to another Courier report.
Plume said he is confident that the USDA probe will exonerate the Iowa plant. He said rabbis will be present at the Gordon plant as well.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency also filed a lawsuit accusing the Postville plant of exceeding limits set in wastewater discharge permits and failing to submit proper risk management plans or hazardous chemical inventory forms.
Plant spokesman Mike Thomas told the Courier that those matters have already been resolved with city and state officials.
Plume said the Gordon packing plant project could be a major boon to the Pine Ridge reservation economy, particularly the ag segment.
"The folks in the beef industry are always looking for an edge," Plume said. "This effort is something that's going to help the Native American ag economy substantially."
He said grazing fees on tribal land are a major revenue source for the tribe. "The ag economy is the lifeblood of the Oglala Sioux Tribe's nonfederal dollars."

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2005/06/23/news/local/top/news01.txt