During the first decades of the 20th century, shortly after the 1905 passing of the law separating church and state, the ACIP was called upon to take over the administration and financial organization of the large Paris Jewish community. About 48,000 of France’s 80,000 Jews lived in Paris or its suburbs at the turn of the century. Repeated fraudulent procedures in ritual slaughter discovered by the butchery control board deeply shocked clients seeking to observe kashrut. Moreover, owners of (Jewish) butcher shops and delicatessens who evaded the monthly tax imposed on their trade but which most of their counterparts paid, harmed the financial interests of the Jewish community for whom the butchery tax was an important source of revenue. Relations between Jewish religious authorities and (Jewish) butchers and delicatessen owners, but also their clients deteriorated as a result of wariness and suspicions about the true nature of how truly kosher were available meat products. The fines imposed by the Consistory to halt fraudulent practices showed little efficiency. Moreover, the pressure levelled by the Russian-Polish (Jewish) immigrant community about how shehita was practiced, and also their denunciation of the lax observance of shabbat by food merchants, but also the competition in the field of animal slaughter prompted the Consistory in overhauling the כשר butchery service towards greater respect for conformity with ritual rules. These changes were accompanied by an increase in community taxes on kosher products. But fraud and sanctions alternated without offering a real solution. The Consistory then modified its strategy. The state law of August 1, 1905 on the repression of fraud in the sale of merchandises and falsification of foodstuffs referred to offenses or attempted offences about the nature and quality of merchandises, as well as to their kind and origin could very well apply to the frauds committed by certain of the participants in the ritual slaughter circuit. ACIP then initiated judicial action against those guilty of such frauds, a procedure which only finally produced concrete results in the early 1930s. * The Israelite Consistory of Paris (ACIP) is the Paris branch of the Consistoire Central Israelite de France (Central Israelite Consistory of France), the board of senior Jewish figures created by then-Emperor Napoleon 1 in December 1808, and which, then as today , administers Jewish religious affairs in France.