How US Prisons disprove the 'Kosher is Cheap' Myth
In my recent article on the subject of Steven Hayes' lawsuit against the Connecticut Department of Corrections for allegedly starving him because of a lack of a (suitably) kosher food supply: (1) I pointed out that the cost of providing two kashruth certified meals a day to prisoners is more than double the cost of providing normal meals.
This was based on the figures for Florida provided by the American Bar Association in their journal and were that providing just two kosher meals a day costs $4 per prisoner, while providing three non-kosher meals a day costs $1.52 per prisoner. (2)
These numbers might seem rather low, but bear in mind when you have a hundred thousand locked-in customers (3) who are consuming your product three times every day then you can get rather significant economies of scale (each meal you provide costs less because you aren't providing three meals a day, but rather three hundred thousand thus can can bulk buy food product and are accordingly able to negotiate the individual unit price down thus reducing the cost per meal).
It is also worth pointing out that the $4 cost price for two kosher meals (which jumps to $7 for three meals) (4) also only includes the food itself: what it doesn't include are the other ancillaries that are required to maintain that kosher status. (5) The most obvious of these requirements is the fact that kosher meals require specialist packaging as well as seals (to indicate that the food has not been tampered with by non-jews) (6) that is going to significantly increase the cost of kosher-certified prison meals yet further given that we are not talking significant volumes here as only circa three hundred inmates in Florida have actually proven they have a valid religious reason for wanting kosher meals (although four thousand have been trying to demand them) . (7)
Florida, as District Court Judge Patricia Seitz has rightly ruled, only has to provide these kosher meals to inmates with a specific religious need, (8) which includes Muslims (since food being Halal is almost identical to it being Kosher) and Seventh Day Adventists. (9)
The Department of Corrections has no obligation to cater to the tastes of prisoners who seem to want hotel-style catering as opposed to understanding that prison food (like most food cooked in bulk) has always been fairly sub-standard, but as long as it is nutritious and provided in sufficient quantity then that is all it needs to be.
The irony is that kosher meals are seen as 'better' by many inmates, (10) but this is just a form of psychological placebo as kashruth has literally nothing to do with health regulations or picking out better quality food.
To paraphrase Rabbi Hayim Halevy Donin: jews do not eat kosher food because it has any health benefits or tastes better, but rather they do so because it conforms to a series of very specific religious requirements. (11)
Indeed kashruth requirements are not related to health at all since it is oft-argued by jews that pork is 'unhealthy' and that is why it is treif, (12) but the origins of this prohibition are to do with a rejection of non-jewish religious practices not because it was unhealthy. (13) Donin illustrates this by pointing out that pigs have as bad a reputation for uncleanliness as barnyard fowl, but yet the former is treif while the latter is kosher. (14)
Kashruth observant jews have to perform purely ritualistic absurdities such as roast some types of nuts (for example cashews) if they find mites are present and while this doesn't remove the mites: it turns them halakhically-speaking into dust, which therefore means the nuts are now kosher rather than treif. (15)
There is no 'health benefit' to this and nor does the food taste better just because the nuts were roasted by a jew, but yet ritualistic practices like this are the very essence of kashruth: since as we saw earlier it is not ancient health diet or designed to taste good (indeed sometimes it is designed to taste unpleasant such as the religious requirement to consume bitter herbs on some festival days), but rather is a system of specific religious rules.
Indeed as we can see in the example of the Florida Department of Corrections: there is no need for kosher food to taste good, because a prison can quite happily serve you kosher peanut butter, sardines and cabbage for your diet and be serving you a kosher meal. (16)
The only physical reason I can think of for inmates claiming that kosher meals 'taste better' (other than a psychological placebo effect) is because they are less mass-produced than normal prison food and have to be acquired from outside (thus because they produced in small numbers in a commercial environment you are likely to get better quality food). (17)
The fact that the meals reportedly tasted better was incidental to their being kosher food and not related to (or because of) it: I rather suspect that had inmates bought in vegan or halal food from catering firms then they would have reported much the same increase in food quality/taste.
From this we can conclude that there is no actual reason (other than perceived taste/food quality because it is brought in from outside) that prison inmates in the United States want more kosher food, but the price tag for the Department of Corrections providing such is immense with the cost of providing kosher meals in the United States currently standing at $54.1 million a year with a relatively small take-up (i.e., just those who are entitled to them for religious reasons). (18)
Again to put that in perspective: providing three non-kosher prison meals in the United States costs circa $1.50 a head, while providing three kosher prison meals costs $7 in Florida, $5 in New York State and $8 in California. (19)
The worst thing about that figure is that it doesn't include all the special ancillary costs that are required for kosher meals to be provided to jewish inmates (for example microwaves that have been tovelled [i.e. ,ritually immersed in a Mikvah] which can only be operated by a jew [due to the law of bishul nochri] and used only for kosher meals [as otherwise they become treif]) (20) and which would be considerable.
When you the cost up it clearly indicates that keeping kosher simply isn't cheap.
This in spite of repeated and constant claims from the kosher certification industry and as well as jewish 'watchdog' organizations like the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith that the additional cost of kashruth certification and practice is tiny/negligible.
A recent study of the kosher certification industry reported this claim, but noted that it is based on self-reported data not on detailed case studies. (21) The data reported by the industry does not support this however as it focuses only large clients with significant economies of scale and is light on information about the cost-to-profit ratio and doesn't seem to have taken into account 'gearing up' costs (e.g., the potentially significant costs attached to achieving kashruth certification [let alone maintaining it]) although there are subtle mention of the costs to certified firms from the kosher certification organizations. (22)
A good example of such a situation is provided by the changes in intellectual fashion/opinion as to what is, and what is not, kashruth (and it is important to stress that the trend is getting stricter and stricter) (23) can very easily mean that food products have to be completely redesigned to fit in with kashruth certification (24) or changing opinions of satisfactorily kosher status of other kashruth certification organizations can cause huge amounts of product to be recalled from the shops and destroyed just because it lacks a modern form of ritual ju ju. (25)
All this converges on the single inescapable conclusion that kashruth certification is not cheap and a significant part of reason why kosher meals in US prisons are so expensive per unit relative to non-kosher meals is that kosher food is itself significantly more expensive than non-kosher because of the lengths that have to be gone to attain certification of kashruth compliance while achieving little to no advantage in quality of ingredients or helping achieve a healthier diet for its consumers.
References
(1) This is available at the following address: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/steven-hayes-and-his-kosher-food
(2) https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/kosher_food_in_demand_among_gentile_florida_prisoners_4_daily_cost_worries/
(3) http://www.dc.state.fl.us/oth/Quickfacts.html
(4) https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/us/you-dont-have-to-be-jewish-to-love-a-kosher-prison-meal.html?_r=0
(5) https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/kosher_food_in_demand_among_gentile_florida_prisoners_4_daily_cost_worries/
(6) Cf. Shaul Wagschal, 1991, 'The New Practical Guide to Kashruth', 2nd Edition, Feldheim: Jerusalem, pp. 95-98
(7) https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/kosher_food_in_demand_among_gentile_florida_prisoners_4_daily_cost_worries/
(8) Ibid.
(9) http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/jewish-inmates-say-florida-prisons-serve-cold-gros/nfX9r/
(10) https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/kosher_food_in_demand_among_gentile_florida_prisoners_4_daily_cost_worries/
(11) Hayim Halevy Donin, 1991, [1972], 'To Be A Jew: A Guide to Jewish Observance in Contemporary Life', 1st Edition, Basic Books: New York, pp. 97-98
(12) On this see Daphne Barak-Erez, 2007, 'Outlawed Pigs: Law, Religion, and Culture in Israel', 1st Edition, University of Wisconsin Press: Madison, pp. 15-26
(13) David Kraemer, 2009, 'Jewish Eating and Identity Throughout the Ages', 2nd Edition, Routledge: New York, pp. 9-37; John Cooper, 1993, 'Eat and Be Satisifed: A Social History of Jewish Food', 1st Edition, Jason Aronson: Northvale, pp. 17-36
(14) Donin, Op. Cit., p. 99
(15) Wagschal, Op. Cit., pp. 29-30
(16) http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/jewish-inmates-say-florida-prisons-serve-cold-gros/nfX9r/
(17) https://forward.com/articles/155363/not-just-jews-eat-kosher-food-in-prison/; https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/us/you-dont-have-to-be-jewish-to-love-a-kosher-prison-meal.html?_r=0
(18) Ibid.
(19) Ibid.
(20) On this see Wagschal, Op. Cit., pp. 32-36
(21) Timothy Lytton, 2013, 'Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food', 1st Edition, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, pp. 4; 79-80
(22) Ibid., p. 108-111
(23) Kraemer, Op. Cit., pp. 147-172
(24) Ibid., pp. 147-151
(25) Lytton, Op. Cit., pp. 82-83