A conversation between Jewish Museum London, & Jeremy Cohen, Assistant to the Chief Executive, London Board of Shechita
Museum: Tell us about your role and the role of the board
Jeremy: The London board for Shechita is a service provider that licences the kosher meats in London. We’re quite an old Jewish organisation, founded in 1804; we’re a charity, (we’re a non-profit making organisation) and we operate on behalf of both the Spanish Portuguese Jews congregation, and the United Synagogue of Great Britain. Our mission is to provide a secure supply of high quality kosher meat and poultry at the lowest possible cost, abiding by the high standards of kashrut.
My role is very varied; every day is very different. Overall, I keep in touch with the staff and team leaders to make sure everything’s okay and deal with any issues for example if a butcher has a question they would get in contact with us.
We have 15 board members, and several sub-committees such as the finance committee, the licencing committee, and consumer affairs; essentially, they make sure that the board is running smoothly. We also purchase the seals for kosher certificates, and prepare the certificates for the shops and butcheries; we have lots of seals and labels and tapes that needs to be put on actual items of meat after they are slaughtered.
Museum: You’re just focused on London, are there similar boards across the country?
Jeremy: In the past, there used to be few dozen but the Jewish community has changed over the past century, and communities have become much smaller; now it’s Manchester and London that serve most remaining communities. Although there are pockets of Jewish communities elsewhere such as in Liverpool, Glasgow, Gateshead, Brighton and Bournemouth, the kosher shops are generally all in London or Manchester. We licence all the kosher butcher shops in London but the actual slaughter, the shechita, is mainly carried out in the northwest around Manchester area, both cattle and poultry slaughter. So we have people who live in Manchester that work for us too. There is one poultry abattoir in Milton Keynes, but other than that, all the premises we work with are in London.
Selecting an object
Museum: Which objects have you chosen to Represent the work of the London Board for Shechita?
Jeremy: When it comes to kosher food, there needs to be a licence certificate called a hechsher and it needs to be present in every kosher shop, restaurant or factory. We distribute the licences or renew them (generally around the end of summer in time for Rosh Hashanah) On the licence, there’s our main details, the details of the actual licenced premises, and then both the permitted foods, and the permitted activities that are allowed to be carried out at the premises. There’s also the signatures of the of the dayonim, senior rabbis.
Our licencing committee go once a year to inspect each premises ensuring that things are up to good quality and good hygiene standards. They then feedback to us and then, assuming everything’s okay, we prepare the certificates and hand them out for the new year just before Rosh Hashanah. Our licences last one year and then have to be renewed.
With the seals, essentially, after slaughter, all the different various pieces of meat needs to be tagged with our seal on them. These have the board crown and basic information. Once it’s all packaged and boxed up for delivery, those boxes need to also have labels or tape with our logos on. Likewise, in the factories, there needs to be seals on the actual vans so that we know that the supervisor on the other side of receiving the deliveries can tell if it’s been tampered with or not. The seals are very important and it’s very difficult to tamper with.
Museum: Did the pandemic affect that process?
Jeremy: Although it was really tough for everyone, in terms of national shechita we managed to basically keep open, despite issues with staffing due to catching COVID-19 or having to isolate. As there were more people at home during the pandemic there was actually more demand for meat and poultry. We managed though and our supervisors and the application of seals were able to continue during that period. It was actually a very busy time for us.
A substantial amount of Jewish people, even if they don’t actually observe, are still traditional. So, although they may eat out a non-kosher restaurant, they won’t necessarily have non-kosher food in their homes. So whilst everyone was stuck in the homes, I guess that’s why the demand for kosher meat went up. But we’re always trying to help educate the consumer as well, about kosher meat and what goes on behind the scenes, because the processes are something that people generally don’t fully understand. To help with this, we made a couple of videos on our website a few years ago which are a good source of information as well. One’s about the board itself and the other is called ‘myth busting kosher meat’. It’s about quality and costs and choice of meats and things like that.
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For more information visit: www.shechita.org/about-us/
