You might have a harder time finding kosher meat in the coming weeks, because the country’s largest kosher meat packing plant, Agriprocessors, was raided this past Monday. At least 300 of its nearly 1000 employees were arrested for using fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers, and immigration officials have said they expect the number to go as high as 700.

Agriprocessors is located in Postville, Iowa, which might seem like an odd place for the nation’s largest kosher meat packing plant:

About 200 Hasidic Jews arrived in Postville in 1987, when butcher Aaron Rubashkin of Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood reopened a defunct meatpacking plant with his two sons, Sholom and Heshy, just outside the city limits. Business boomed at the plant, reviving the depressed economy while pitting the newcomers against the predominantly Lutheran community.

“Iowa meatpacking plant raided in ID theft investigation” [USA Today]

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“Immigration Authorities Arrest Hundreds in Raid on Nation’s Largest Kosher Meat Plant” [Forward]
(Photo: Getty Images)

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