Agriprocessors - the controversial kosher meat company - has recently been hit with a barrage of fines, citations, accusations and legal troubles, coming from all fronts including all three branches of the US government, as well as civil society.

Here’s a rundown of the latest:

Violations of Workers’ Rights.  On March 20, the Iowa Division of Labor Services issued a $182,000 fine for 39 citations to the Postville, IA plant of Agriprocessors, the world’s largest kosher meat processor, for violations of worker health and safety regulations including labeling of hazardous chemicals, emergency response issues and programs for respirator use and blood borne pathogen issues. The company has 15 days to respond to the citations and fines. Although counsel for Agriprocessors said “any valid concerns raised by the Division of Labor Services have been immediately addressed,” the citations resulted from two inspections, one as recent as Feb 11, 2008.

Fake OSHA Reports? According to FailedMessiah.com, last year Agriprocessors actually released a fake OSHA report absolving the company of any charges which had been leveled at it.  It was reported on in Kosher Today at the time, but in fact, when pressed, Agriprocessors’ counsel admitted to The Forward that the OSHA worker was not acting in an official capacity when he had visited the Postville plant. Now the true report has been released by the State of Iowa, because the state conducts all OSHA inspections itself.

Food Safety Violations.  Two weeks ago, the Union of Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), which has been trying to unionize Agriprocessors workers for some time, released a report based on the results of its FOIA requests detailing a number of citations made to the kosher meat processor for food safety violations found by federal investigators from the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS). As part of its report, the union uncovered a letter from four members of Congress, three of whom are Jewish, to then Acting Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Conner, outlining their concern over the many food safety citations received by Agriprocessors and the lack of clear penalty or remediation for any of these violations.

Undocumented Immigrant Labor. In January, Agriprocessors lost its two-year court battle against the UFCW when a federal appeals court ruled against the company’s claim that workers in its Brooklyn distribution plant could not unionize because many of them are undocumented immigrants.