Earlier this week, the Humane Society released hidden-camera video taken in a California slaughterhouse that has explosive potential. The Washington Post had the story first on Wednesday, before the video was officially released, and reporter Rick Weiss described it as showing:
[W]orkers at a California slaughterhouse delivering repeated electric shocks to cows too sick or weak to stand on their own; drivers using forklifts to roll the ‘downer’ cows on the ground in efforts to get them to stand up for inspection; and even a veterinary version of waterboarding in which high-intensity water sprays are shot up animals’ noses.
And all before the USDA inspector showed up to work. Needless to say, these practices are clear violations of laws designed to protect animals and to keep unsafe meat out of the food supply. (Mad cow disease has been correlated with downer cows.) Temple Grandin, the famed slaughterhouse expert, said it was “one of the worst animal-abuse videos I have ever viewed.”
The footage was shot at Hallmark Meat Packing in Chino, California, which sells the meat to the Chino processor Westland Meat Company. In the last five years, Westland has sold over 100 million pounds of frozen ground beef to the USDA’s commodities program, which donates the food to school lunch programs. And here’s the kicker, according to the Post: “In the 2004-05 school year, the Agriculture Department honored Westland with its Supplier of the Year award for the National School Lunch Program.” The Los Angeles Times reported that only hours after the video’s release, the the USDA booted Westland from its food programs, and put a hold on any Westland products already in its inventory.
The Ethicurean’s Bonnie Powell was also on this story early, and her angry, pointed synopsis is a must-read. I’d stick very close to this blog for more on the subject.
all people do is talk about the subject
nothing of major importance is ever DONE.
enough of 50 dollar fines and a slap on the wrist crap
give manditory 2yrs in prison for abusers.
the prison rec will screw up their lives see if that is a deterant
And we thought Sinclair Lewis’s “The Jungle” started setting things right. This is an abomination. Thanks for the heads up, will share with others who care.
Yet another reason to go vegetarian! Remove the demand and these places will go out of business.
I’m with SlinkyJ. The meat industry is horrendously wasteful, to not even get into the vile evidence recounted here — we are overdue for a nasty outbreak of Mad Cow, and CJ in humans. I lived in London for 6 years in the 80s and am thus not allowed to donate blood because of their mad cow outbreaks! I’ve been a healthy vegetarian for a long time now.
People starve as the rich globally chow down on meat — see this article in the NY Times and think hard about your eating habits…
(in case the link does not work, it is “Rethinking the meat guzzler” January 27, 2008, by Mark Bittman,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html?scp=1&sq=meat+guzzler&st=nyt
I was interviewing Bill Niman, of Niman Ranch, a couple of years ago. When talking about the local food issue and shipping predicaments, he said that he has not found a slaughter house in California that he would want Niman Ranch meat processed at. I had no idea what CA slaughter houses looked like compared to better operated ones outside the state, but I imagine that when Niman was touring these facilities, they put their best foot forward. Interesting, it was still not good enough for him. It’s good that videos like this get out, but it’s also the everyday practices we shouldl concern ourselves with.
If everyone could see what goes on in slaughterhouses everyday I suspect that there would be more vegetarians in the world than carnivores. “Downed” animals are not only sick and dying from any number of unknown illnesses (yummy) when they are killed for food, but they spend a lot of time lying in their own feces (double-yum!) The meat is so contaminated that it is not supposed to be in the food chain according to federal regulations.
Federal regs do not stop the factory farms from loading up most animals raised for food with antibiotics because of the horrendous conditions they are forced to live in. In fact animals grown for food receive “30 times the antibiotics” that people do creating drug resistant bacteria. The Centers for Disease Control says that there are “50 million cases of meat-related illnesses in the U.S. yearly.”
People say that we should make these conditions better and cleaner to make our food supply “safer”. But even if they did we’d still have something called “meat”. And the American Dietetic Association and British Medical Association have both said that “Vegetarians have a lower risk for heart disease,colorectal, ovarian and breast cancer, diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure.”
Lincat