Where’s the Beef?

On Sunday evening, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the recall of 143 million pounds of beef due to fears of infection by E. coli, salmonella, and mad cow disease. It was the biggest meat recall in US history, four times larger than the previous record. More alarmingly, the recall affected over 37 million pounds of hamburgers, tacos, and sandwiches served through America’s school lunch program, with the USDA sheepishly admitting that most of that total had already been consumed by the nation’s youngsters.

The recall was sparked by a video released by the Humane Society of the United States, after a six-week long undercover investigation at the Hallmark/Westland slaughterhouse in Chino, California. The video, available on YouTube, shows “downers,” crippled cows too sick to even walk, being shoved by forklifts and dragged by chains towards the slaughter floor. Federal law bans slaughtering downers because of the health risks of eating diseased animals.

Having initially criticized the Humane Society’s undercover investigation, the USDA was left scrambling. On Feb. 5 it closed the Hallmark/Westland plant, and last weekend it issued the recall. But in the same breath the USDA downplayed the event’s broader significance, calling this “an isolated incident of egregious violations,” and noting that USDA inspectors stand guard in America’s 6,200 slaughterhouses.

Yet USDA inspectors were also present at Hallmark/Westland, and the cruelty occurred on their watch. The Hallmark/Westland plant had already been cited on several occasions in 2005 for humane handling violations—the same year that the Westland Meat Company was awarded the “Supplier of the Year Award” for the national school lunch program.

Moreover, the USDA’s decision to include meat dating back to February 2006 in the recall is a recognition that the cruel practices existed for two years under an inspector’s nose. As Paul Shapiro, Senior Director of the Humane Society’s Factory Farming Campaign, told me, “The USDA inspector was there, this cruelty was overt, it was out in the open—why they didn’t catch it or stop it is mind-boggling.”

Nor was this an isolated incident: A 2006 report from the USDA’s own Inspector General found widespread abuse. Randomly inspecting 12 slaughterhouses, the report identified 29 cases of downers slaughtered as inspectors looked on.

The nation’s meat inspection system is corrupt and incompetent. Inspectors focus on carcasses, not animals—Shapiro notes that inspectors are typically too far down the kill line to either see the live animal, or witness its death. Moreover, collusion with slaughterhouse workers is common—a 2006 New York Times investigation found inspectors accepting gifts from plant managers and playing computer games on the job. The veterinarian at Hallmark/Westland arrived every day at a pre-announced time—and workers only abused the animals outside of these hours.

Yesterday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for swift action to ensure “a message is sent that mistreatment of animals will be not be tolerated by anyone.” San Bernardino District Attorney Michael Ramos has taken an admirably strong response, filing charges against the plant’s manager and an employee implicated in the video. According to Shapiro, this may be the first time ever that slaughterhouse employees have been indicted on felony-level animal cruelty charges—despite the suspension of 12 slaughterhouses for cruelty violations last year alone.

A century ago, Upton Sinclair was appalled by the stockyards and slaughterhouses of Chicago. His novel, The Jungle, drew the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt, Class of 1880. and led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906, mandating federal inspections of slaughterhouses. In 1958, this law formed the basis for the Humane Slaughter Act—a law with popular support so strong that President Dwight Eisenhower remarked, “if I went by mail, I’d think no one was interested in anything but humane slaughter.”

But half a century of federal neglect and localized cruelty have undermined that law’s intent. The USDA now argues that the Humane Slaughter Act does not apply to poultry at all—meaning that 90 percent of the nation’s farm animals, or nine billion birds, are killed every year with no federal oversight. The Humane Society is contesting that interpretation, but in the meantime anything is allowed—as workers at a West Virginia Pilgrim’s Pride Slaughterhouse demonstrated when undercover footage revealed them stomping on live chickens and slamming others against a wall.

Congress must act to stem these abuses. As a first step, it should pass the Downed Animal and Food Safety Protection Act, a bill that would ban the slaughter of any downed animal—including pigs, sheep, and other livestock currently sold diseased into the food supply. Next, it should take on Rep. Chris Shays’ (R-Conn.) Farm Animal Stewardship Purchasing Act, which would ensure basic humane standards on the farm, in transport, and in slaughter.

The cruelty at Hallmark/Westland was institutionalized, but its causes were economic. The $133 billion American meat processing and packaging industry has expanded rapidly, as the world’s meat consumption has risen fourfold in the last 50 years. The result is slaughterhouses that mandate a kill every three seconds, and an inspection regime that can’t keep up. Shapiro points out that the simplest way for individuals to stop abuses like those at Hallmark/Westland is to eat less meat. An uncomfortable thought perhaps, but less so than re-watching the video.

Lewis E. Bollard ’09 is a social studies concentrator in Kirkland House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.