Two federal agents yesterday inspected the closed Skverer poultry shlachthois after opponents claimed the facility was shechting chickens against a federal judge’s closure order.
Inspectors with the U.S. Department of Agriculture didn’t find any violations of the court order closing down the facility and prohibiting the plant from operating, authorities said.
The plant accepted frozen processed chickens for storage – which didn’t violate the court order, authorities said.
The plant remained closed and inspectors and other authorities confirmed there were no problems or violations but referred all comments to the agency in Washington.
Deputy village Mayor Yisroel Spitzer said the operators and village cooperated to bring out the facts after false information was disseminated.
“All that was done was the storage of frozen processed chicken. which were sealed in enclosed cases waiting to be transferred to the retail store,” Spitzer said. “There is no processing being done on the premises.”
Concern started yesterday morning when an e-mail went out among a group of Rockland environmentalists describing a neighbor seeing five masked men dressed in white unloading boxes wrapped in plastic from an 18-wheel truck.
The neighbor drove up to the plant on the New Hempstead border. She got an affirmative answer when she asked another man if the facility was accepting a delivery of chickens.
The judge ordered the plant shut down in late December, citing a public risk due to unsanitary conditions and the fact the chickens was not being inspected before going to market. The operators want to build a larger shlachthois in the same area off of Route 45.
{The Record/Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter}
