The bankruptcy of the country's largest kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing company, Agriprocessors Inc. of Postville, Iowa, has finally hit the Pittsburgh market. The impact is being felt all along the chain, from the purveyors who are seeing their supplies dwindle to the consumers who are paying more or doing without.

Kosher meat and poultry are still available from other sources, but shortages are becoming serious and driving up the prices.

"There is a huge meat shortage now and it's really catching up on everyone," said Nancy Shlomo, owner of the kosher wholesaler Sampo Distributors in McKees Rocks. She said Agriprocessors accounted for 40 to 50 percent of her meat supply.

"There's still plenty of chicken but everyone is very, very low on meat," she said. "The other vendors are trying to increase production but they can't meet the demand.

"Last week I asked for 25 cases in one order and got 10, so I divided up what I had among my customers. This week I ordered 25 cases and got none."

Shimon Ohayon, owner of Pinati Kosher Mediterranean Grill in Squirrel Hill, also is seeing problems.

"It's hard to get products, and if I do get it the prices keep going up. I try to be creative, buy smart, see what's in the market and use what's there."

The supply of chicken got a boost this week, when a bankruptcy court in New York approved a $2.5 million advance for Agriprocessors to resume processing its inventory of 750,000 chickens through Jan. 9. But the beef end of the business is not affected. The plant shipped its last meat almost a month ago.

Brisket and other expensive cuts of beef are available now, Mrs. Shlomo said, but next week could be a different story. And the prices keep rising -- 45 cents a pound more for beef stew this week, 25 cents a pound more for ground beef and lamb. Cheaper cuts are harder to find, which disproportionately affects low-income consumers.

Nursing home residents are among those feeling the pinch. Sampo supplies them with a popular precooked pot roast but, Mrs. Shlomo said, "We were short last week and we're going to be short again this week."

Also hard hit are those who rely on the Squirrel Hill Food Pantry, where the 30 cents-a-pound price hike for chicken means less for some and none for others. "We are serving more people now than we have in our history, and food prices overall are up 25 percent," said Pantry director Becky Abrams. "So families with children have been getting chicken twice a month and those without children have not been getting any."

Other kosher meat processors are stepping up production, but their mark of rabbinical supervision, or hechsher, may not be acceptable to all observant Jews. Members of Pittsburgh's 1,000-member Lubavitch community, for example, do not eat products from Empire Kosher because their rabbis do not approve the hechsher. Those consumers relied heavily on Agriprocessors brands -- Aaron's Best, Shor Habor, Supreme Kosher and Rubashkins -- because they carried the CHK hechsher, for Crown Heights Kosher, and because they were plentiful when the plant was in full operation.

"It's affecting us directly," said Lubavitch community member Amy Cohn of her seven-member family in Squirrel Hill. "I might like to make hamburger or spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, but there's no beef on the shelf right now for us. Nothing. So we're not having it."

It's not a big loss for her household, she said, because they'd already cut way back on red meat for health and budgetary reasons. "As long as we have chicken we're fine," she said. "But I have friends calling up and saying, 'Oh my gosh, there's no meat, what are we going to do?'"

The end result? "People are changing their diets," Mrs. Cohn said.

"I believe in consumers taking control of the market," said Rabbi Daniel Wasserman of the orthodox Shaare Torah Congregation in Squirrel Hill. "I've told people over and over, if the price is affected, then eat less meat."

Lila Weiss and Saul Markovic, owners of Murray Avenue Kosher in Squirrel Hill, said they have always dealt with a number of meat processing companies, so they've been able to keep the supply coming, even if it's not as large or varied. For example, they sell David Elliot brand processed meat and organic poultry, which carry the CHK hechsher. "I've had a relationship with these other companies for years, so they're not going to cut me out in favor of a new customer," said Mr. Markovic. "The people who are most affected are the ones that dealt strictly with Agriprocessors."

The kosher meat supply has always been patchy at times because kosher meat production is an exacting business. Animals must be fed and slaughtered according to Jewish law and under rabbinic supervision. Even when an animal has been raised and killed properly, the rabbi might find a broken leg or some other disqualifier that would consign it to the non-kosher market.

Agriprocessors had been struggling to keep up production since May, when a raid resulted in the arrests of nearly 400 undocumented workers. The company -- already facing a class action lawsuit by workers -- also was accused of unsafe working conditions and more than 9,000 child labor violations, leading the Orthodox Union to threaten the loss of its kosher certification.

Some customers defended the owners and said they were targeted unfairly, while others were concerned enough by the allegations to swear off the company's products. The latter group included Giant Eagle, which stopped purchasing from Agriprocessors in May, and now buys its kosher poultry from Empire Kosher in Mifflintown, Juniata County, and its meats from Alle Processing in Maspeth, N.Y.

The Agriprocessors scandal sparked a debate in the Jewish community over the ethics of food production, including the treatment of workers, animals and the environment. Rabbis in the conservative movement of Judaism are working on creating a new symbol called a "hechsher tzedek," or justice hechsher, to certify that ethical standards have been met. Such a symbol would be in addition to kosher certification, but Orthodox rabbis have sharply criticized the idea.

Mrs. Shlomo said that if Agriprocessors doesn't reopen, "Passover is going to be a problem. I'm waiting to hear from a guy in California who gets beef from Uruguay. It's very lean and not what we're used to, but I think that right now people will take anything."