[Marxism] Video Reveals Violations of Laws, Abuse of Cows at Slaughterhouse

[Greg McDonald]

And why exactly am I so reticent to finally give up meat? More to the  
point,  should we really be so surprised that cattle, kept in squalid  
overcrowded pens in faint resemblance to conditions in our  
overcrowded prisons, are also being subjected to electric shock and  
the slaughterhouse version of waterboarding?

Greg McDonald


Published on Wednesday, January 30, 2008 by The Washington Post

Video Reveals Violations of Laws, Abuse of Cows at Slaughterhouse

by Rick Weiss

Video footage being released today shows workers 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 — all  
violations of state and federal laws designed to prevent animal  
cruelty and to keep unhealthy animals, such as those with mad cow  
disease, out of the food supply.0130 01

Moreover, the companies where these practices allegedly occurred are  
major suppliers of meat for the nation’s school lunch programs,  
including in Maryland, according to a company official and federal  
documents.

The footage was taken by an undercover investigator for an animal  
welfare group, who wore a customized video camera under his clothes  
while working at the facility last year. [ View the video on the  
Humane Society Web site ] It is evidence that anti-cruelty and food  
safety rules are inadequate, and that Agriculture Department  
inspection and enforcement need to be enhanced, said officials with  
the Humane Society of the United States, which coordinated the project.

“These were not rogue employees secretly doing these things,” the  
investigator said in a telephone interview on the condition of  
anonymity because he hopes to infiltrate other slaughterhouses. “This  
is the pen manager and his assistant doing this right in the open.”

The investigator and Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society,  
said the footage was taken at Hallmark Meat Packing in Chino, Calif.  
Hallmark sells meat for processing to Westland Meat Co. in Chino,  
according to Westland President Steve Mendell, who is also Hallmark’s  
operations manager.

Over the past five years, Westland has sold about 100 million pounds  
of frozen beef, valued at $146 million, to the Agriculture  
Department’s commodities program, which supplies food for school  
lunches and programs for the needy, according to federal documents.

In the 2004-05 school year, the Agriculture Department honored  
Westland with its Supplier of the Year award for the National School  
Lunch Program.

In an interview, Mendell expressed disbelief that employees used stun  
guns to get sick or injured animals on their feet for inspection.

“That’s impossible,” he said, adding that “electrical prods are not  
allowed on the property.”

Asked whether his employees use fork lifts to get moribund animals  
off the ground, he said: “I can’t imagine that.”

Asked whether water was sprayed up animals’ noses to get them to  
stand up, he said: “That’s absolutely not true.”

“We have a massive humane treatment program here that we follow to  
the n{+t}{+h} degree, so this doesn’t even sound possible,” Mendell  
said. “I don’t stand out there all day, but to me it would be next to  
impossible.”

California law and USDA regulations do not allow disabled animals to  
be dragged by chains, lifted with forklifts, or, with few exceptions,  
to enter the food supply, all of which happened at Hallmark during  
the investigator’s time there last fall, he said.

Video images show those activities, as well as a trailer with  
Hallmark’s name on it.

One reason that regulations call for keeping downers — cows that  
cannot stand up — out of the food supply is that they may harbor  
bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. It is caused by  
a virus-like infectious particle that can cause a fatal brain disease  
in people.

Another is because such animals have, in many cases, been wallowing  
in feces, posing added risks of E. coli and salmonella contamination.

The Humane Society and other groups have for years urged Congress to  
pass legislation that would tighten oversight at slaughterhouses.

Kenneth Petersen, assistant administrator of the Food Safety and  
Inspection Service’s Office of Field Operations, whose 7,600  
inspectors monitor the nation’s 6,200 slaughterhouses and meat- 
processing plants for the Agriculture Department, said he had not  
seen the video. He added that he would have preferred that the Humane  
Society contacted the agency directly.

But he said use of a Hot Shot — a brand-name electric device used to  
get dawdling cows to move along — is “not allowed” as a means of  
getting a downer on its feet.

In the video, handlers repeatedly apply powerful shocks to the heads,  
necks, spines and rectums of immobile cows.

“That’s certainly not a way to have them stand up or a correct way to  
move them,” Petersen said.

Raising a cow on the prongs of a forklift is also not allowed, he said.

“We’ve made it clear that mechanical means to try to elevate an  
animal is not considered humane,” Petersen said.

If he had evidence that the practices in the video were going on at a  
slaughterhouse, “I would immediately suspend them as an  
establishment,” he said. “You’re done. You’re suspended. Everything  
stops. That’s what we call an egregiously inhumane handling violation.”

Temple Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State  
University and an expert in slaughter practices, called the Humane  
Society footage “one of the worst animal-abuse videos I have ever  
viewed.”

The investigator said a USDA inspector appeared twice a day, at 6:30  
a.m. and about 12:30 p.m., to look at each cow to be slaughtered that  
day. The practices occurred before the inspector’s appearance, he  
said, with the goal of getting the animals on their feet for the  
short time the inspector was there.

“Every day, I would see downed cattle too sick or injured to stand or  
walk arriving at the slaughterhouse,” he said. “Workers would do  
anything to get the cows to stand on their feet.”

USDA regulations say that if an animal goes down after it is  
inspected but before it is slaughtered, then it must be reinspected.  
But that rarely, if ever, happened, according to the Humane Society.

“They wanted to do whatever they could to get them into the kill box,  
including jabbing them in the eye, slamming into them with a forklift  
and simulating drowning or waterboarding the animals,” Pacelle said —  
all practices that can be seen in the video.

Mad cow disease is extremely rare in the United States, but of the 15  
cases documented in North America — most of them in Canada — the vast  
majority have been traced to downer cattle. When the United States  
had its first case a few years ago, 44 nations closed their borders  
to U.S. beef, Pacelle said, costing the nation billions of dollars.

To sneak downers past inspectors, Pacelle said, is “penny-wise and  
pound-foolish.”

© 2008 The Washington Post