Belfast threatened by kosher meat shortage - The Jewish Chronicle

Northern Ireland’s tiny Jewish community is fearing for its future as supplies of kosher meat dwindle.

The province’s last-surviving shul, the Belfast Jewish Community Synagogue, imports its kosher meat from Manchester in bulk deliveries organised every eight-to-10 weeks. But in recent months, the burden of post-Brexit paperwork and regulations has left the community struggling to ensure a steady supply.

A kosher meat consignment is expected later this month. But with the community’s most recent delivery dating back to Pesach, “supplies are nearly exhausted,” said Michael Black, chairman of the Belfast Jewish Community. He said that local Jews were very concerned about the problem and feared they could potentially lose their minister, Reverend David Kale, if kosher shortages continued.

Mr Black is also worried that observant community members may choose to relocate. The shul, which has around 66 members, can “just about get a minyan”, Mr Black said. “We always live in hope that some people will move here, that we’ll be able to keep a minister.”

The community has been left reliant on help from the government to navigate a maze of paperwork and new rules. “Suppliers, it’s over their head. They couldn’t do it on their own,” Mr Black said. But the community didn’t “want to be beholden to people in government every time we want some food to have to phone them up,” he stressed. “It’s embarrassing.”

The government has put the UK Trader Scheme in place to ensure that traders don’t pay tariffs on the movement of goods into Northern Ireland from Great Britain, where those goods remain in the UK’s customs territory. However, the Board of Deputies has said that the process has “proved to be complicated and unreliable”, with the community having to go through a second supplier that is registered as part of the scheme.

Meanwhile, the costs of importing kosher goods from Dublin — the only other Jewish community on the island of Ireland — have been “prohibitive,” the Board said, citing currency conversions and transport costs from Europe as some of the factors driving up prices.

Kosher shortages particularly affected many vulnerable members of Northern Ireland’s ageing Jewish community, including those in care homes, attending day care activities or staying in hospital, it said.

There were also concerns that uncertainty over the future of trade rules for Northern Ireland could further affect their ability to secure kosher goods.

Were the grace period — which was extended last month — to end, the community would be “in extreme difficulty” and have to import goods from Dublin, which would be “an unattractive option” due to prices and logistics.

The community has been in contact with the EU and Government officials and hopes that both sides will agree to a solution.

“Both sides say they’re working on it, so obviously we’ve got to give them a bit of space to do that,” Mr Black added.

Meanwhile, in England, London Board of Shechita inspectors reported queues outside butchers over the High Holy Days, but kosher supply is expected to return to usual levels this week.

“It’s obviously been difficult to get the schechitas done with it being yomtov on a Tuesday, Wednesday,” chief executive Avrom Topperman said.

“That’s probably why there might have been difficulties.”

He wasn’t aware of any concerns about nationwide lorry driver shortages affecting supply, he added.