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.
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. 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.
Here is the video through the Humane Society:
HSUS Investigates Slaughterhouse
The process here is to use any means Hallmark can in order to make the sickened cows to stand, just before the USDA meat inspectors can check out the animals before they are slaughtered. The more cows Hallmark can push through the slaughterhouse, the more meat Hallmark can sell, and the more profit Hallmark makes. It is about placing corporate greed above the public safety. Any sickened cows that can not stand up may have such diseases as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. These sickened cows may also have "been wallowing in feces, posing added risks of E. coli and salmonella contamination." USDA regulations and California law does not allow animals "to be dragged by chains, lifted with forklifts, or, with few exceptions, to enter the food supply," because of this risk of disease entering the public food supply, and the public health. However, this undercover investigator said that this type of abuse happens regularly at Hallmark, just before the USDA investigators arrive:
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.
It is all about corporate greed for Hallmark Meat Packing. And they could care less whether young schoolchildren will get sick with mad cow disease because of their own criminal activities. This is just sick.
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