Chicken Breast Is Up 42% Since 2020. The Market That Sets Its Price Has Never Met a Foreign Competitor

By מערכת סופרקליר · 2026-08-01 · 5 min read

42% — How much whole chicken breast has risen in price in Israel since 2020, per court documents cited by Calcalist — while the domestic market has never once been opened to foreign competition (July 2026)

Israelis eat more chicken per person than almost anyone in the world — about 49 kilograms a year, according to figures cited by Calcalist, against a global average of roughly 21.8 kilograms. And yet not a single imported chicken has ever been sold on an Israeli shelf. Not because of taste — because the market is simply closed. Poultry meat imports into Israel have never been approved. On July 28, 2026, the Supreme Court gave the Chief Rabbinate 120 days to decide whether and how to allow kosher chicken imports — the first time anyone has put a hard deadline on it.

A number that keeps climbing

The price data comes from two different angles, and both point the same way. According to TheMarker, chicken prices in Israel have risen 35% since 2021. Two months later, Calcalist published more granular figures drawn from court documents, using a different base year: whole chicken breast is up 42.2% since 2020, now around ₪39.4/kg; sliced breast is up 25% to about ₪39.9/kg; and thighs are up 42% to roughly ₪27.7/kg. The two baselines aren't directly comparable — but both describe the same pattern: a decade of steady price increases, with no outside force pushing back.

One company trying to crack a market that's never opened

The company behind the push is Baldi, a large meat importer that already brings beef into Israel from Brazil. In July 2025, Baldi petitioned the Supreme Court against the Chief Rabbinate after it refused to set clear procedures for certifying imported chicken as kosher — arguing, as quoted by Calcalist, that the Rabbinate was "stopping us from lowering chicken prices." Baldi has already invested roughly ₪21 million building a kosher slaughterhouse in Brazil, built entirely for export to Israel.

By January 2026, with the kashrut question still unresolved, Baldi filed a separate administrative petition against the Ministry of Agriculture over delays in the veterinary approval for its plant — delays the company says "harm the company and competition" (Calcalist). Not long after, the Ministry's chief veterinary officer approved Brazil as a certified poultry-exporting country, with the approval set to take effect on June 15, 2026 — against the position of the Ministry of Agriculture itself, the Broiler Council, and growers' organizations, according to the Israel Poultry Growers Organization, which itself filed an administrative petition to cancel the decision. Even after that approval, without a kashrut framework from the Chief Rabbinate, not a single crate of meat could actually ship.

"It's actually Israeli chicken that doesn't meet international standards"

The central argument against imports is public health. But according to TheMarker, documents submitted to the administrative court reveal the opposite picture: "it's actually Israeli chicken that doesn't meet international standards" — and is barred from export to other countries. In other words, the claim that domestic chicken is safer than imported chicken isn't supported by the regulatory record itself, at least as presented in the legal proceedings.

120 days, no more extensions

That's the backdrop to the Supreme Court's July 28 ruling. Justices Yael Willner, Ofer Grosskopf and Ruth Ronen granted the Chief Rabbinate a 120-day extension to reach a final position on imports — but made clear in the ruling, per Calcalist, that they "assume the work will indeed be completed within the requested timeframe, and no further extensions will be required." It's the first time a judicial body has set a binding timeframe on the Rabbinate over this issue, after a year in which its council held only a single discussion on the matter.

The other side: 6,000 families and a ₪10-billion industry

The Poultry Growers Organization is fighting the import hard. Per Ynet, the industry produces roughly 260 million birds a year through about 20 slaughterhouses, and supports the livelihood of some 6,000 families in a sector worth roughly ₪10 billion annually. The organization's secretary, Moti Alkabetz, warned that opening the market to imports could shut down farms in the Gaza border region and the north — an argument about food security and peripheral employment, not just business competition. Frozen chicken, about 30% of Israeli consumption and mostly bought by institutional buyers, is seen as the most realistic entry point for imports — and so it's the actual battleground here.

What our own prices already show

Even before a single imported bird arrives, Superclear's own price index shows how much chicken breast prices already swing between chains. In a check we ran in August 2026, a pack of fresh chicken breast sold for ₪39.9/kg at Keshet Taamim, ₪42.9/kg under Shufersal's private label, and ₪49.9/kg at both Zol Vebagadol and Super Sapir — a roughly 25% gap between the cheapest and priciest chains, on the same category of product, in a market that has never once had to compete with a single foreign supplier.

What this actually means

Even if the Rabbinate meets the new deadline, it won't mean cheaper chicken next week. The 120 days from July 28 run out around late November 2026 — and only then, if at all, would Baldi actually begin importing, with months of additional logistics still ahead. But this is the first time a court has put a real deadline on a process that has dragged on for more than a year with no time limit at all. If the Rabbinate meets it, Israel will face something new: a market that alone has set your chicken price, with zero foreign competitors, may for the first time have to face one.