Martha Rosenberg: Pay No Attention to That Video Says USDA; Meat Might Be OK to Eat

Published on Feb 11, 2008 - 7:40:36 AM

By: Martha Rosenberg

School districts in 50 states have put a hold on meat from a Chino based slaughterhouse after workers were videotaped tormenting crippled cows www.hsus.org to circumvent USDA rules that say cows must walk from one pen to the next and back to prove they are not too sick to slaughter. Non-ambulatory cows are known to harbor mad cow disease.

Workers at Hallmark/Westland Meat Company, a beef supplier to USDA, shocked animals with electric prods, "water boarded" them, jabbed their eyes with herding paddles and rammed them with forklift blades while they squealed in pain in a videotape shot by Humane Society of the United States undercover investigators.

But now Dr. Ken Peterson, assistant administrator of USDA's Food Inspection Service which enforces the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act says the "downers" may not have entered the food supply.

Maybe workers were routing them to go to dinner and a movie.

Whether schools will disinter the suspicious meat and actually serve it remains to be seen.

For the new Agriculture Secretary, Ed Schafer, the Hallmark/Westland Meat Company recall has been the perfect storm.

Even when people see videos of godforsaken farm animals, most believe their food comes from somewhere else. But the meat from Hallmark/Westland unequivocally went to schools in every state in the nation and was eaten by many children thanks to the National School Lunch Program.

Not only is it in the primary food supply, Schafer can't blame the videotaped conditions on iffy overseas regulation. It "occurred under the noses of eight on-site USDA inspectors," says the Los Angeles Times.

And, according to one activist it was a cakewalk.

"It would take two or three of us to get the cow to stand in front of the inspector, on wobbly legs, and he would say 'That's fine,' " says the activist who videotaped the slaughterhouse conditions during his six week presence at the plant.

And there's more.

Hallmark/Westland was cited for excessive electric prodding of animals in 2005 and e Coli risks in 2002, USDA officials admitted under questioning by reporters.

And Farm Sanctuary, a separate animal welfare group, says it videotaped Hallmark/Westland using forklifts to move animals a full fifteen years earlier.

The meat recall is bad press on both health and humane grounds.

The 27 million pounds of meat Hallmark/Westland distributed to USDA programs exceeds the 21.7 million pounds of e Coli contaminated meat New Jersey based Topps Meat Company distributed before it went out of business in 2007.

But unlike people who ate Topps meat, people who ate Hallmark/Westland meat are still in danger because of mad cow's long incubation period.

E coli can shut down a meat company but mad cow disease can wipe out the entire cattle industry within a matter of weeks. That's why when someone in the US comes down with what could be mad cow disease, health officials are quick to call the condition "spontaneous" or "hereditary" to forestall panic.

A spokesman for the Wesley Medical Center in Wichita where a 53-year-old Kansas man died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) in January said his doctor said it was "not the mad cow version, reports Reuters--prior to lab tests that could confirm his diagnosis. And even though the unnamed man had worked in a slaughterhouse and hunted elk.

Health officials also call recent Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease clusters in Idaho and Indiana a coincidence.

Then there are the humane questions that dwell in a system that makes a sick or dying animal get up and walk to slaughter so no one loses forty dollars on its carcass.

Who is that hungry?

With his predecessor Mike Johanns running for the Senate in Nebraska and ex Secretary Ann Veneman safely at UNICEF, Schafer, former North Dakota Governor, no doubt resents the mess he's inherited and has resorted to swiftboating.

"The Humane Society, since late October, has been willing to let animals suffer out there," rather than notify USDA he said in front of a cattle group in Reno last week, ignoring the fact that eight inspectors were on-site.

But the Los Angeles Times isn't buying it.

"The U.S. Department of Agriculture has 7,800 pairs of eyes scrutinizing 6,200 slaughterhouses and food processors across the nation. But in the end, it took an undercover operation by an animal rights group to reveal that beef from ill and abused cattle had entered the human food supply," it wrote.

It used to be said if slaughterhouses had glass walls, we'd all be vegetarians.

After the Hallmark/Westland expose "and some would be in jail" might be a corollary.

Martha Rosenberg's work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Providence Journal. Arizona Republic, New Orleans Times-Picayune and other newspapers. Now she also shares her views with YubaNet.com's readers.

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