Outside Seven Mile Market, some customers said they have found enough kosher meat to feed their families, and they seemed to be reserving judgment about AgriProcessors' employment practices.
"I need to see both sides," said Stan Hochman, who lives nearby. "When I hear these things, there's always a tainted side. I just don't know."
Rabbi Shlomo Porter, director of the Etz Chaim Center, which eduates adult Jews about religious practices, said AgriProcessors should not be blamed for employees who supplied false documentation.
"I think there has been a slant to try to make a negative picture of kosher slaughtering," said Porter. "If the government felt Rubashkin had done anything wrong, they would have indicted Rubashkin."
Though the government has not charged the company, the immigration agency painted a sordid picture in an affidavit accompanying its request for a search warrrant.
One source, a former supervisor, said 80 percent of employees coming from Mexico, Guatemala and Eastern Europe were in the U.S. illegally, according to the affadavit.
The source also claimed to have discovered and then destroyed a methamphetamine laboratory, which led to a "physical confrontation" with the employee's immediate supervisor and then his firing.
Stephen Bloom, a journalism professor at the University of Iowa who wrote a book about the impact of the plant on Postville, said the company clearly knew it was hiring illegal immigrants.
"It's ironic that the bounty of this slaughterhouse is borne by undocumented workers making minimum wage," said Bloom, author of Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America.
"Now that the immigration and customs agency swoops in, these people who made the profits for the employers are the only ones incurring the penalty."
jonathan.bor@baltsun.com
