Food safety recalls and animal cruelty are increasing under government abdication of public health duties.
February 26, 2014
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The USDA is cutting back on federal meat inspectors, allowing
slaughterhouses to self-police, and already questions about the program
are surfacing. This month, USDA recalled
8.7 million pounds of
beef products processed at Rancho Feeding Corp. which included Nestle's
Philly Steak and Cheese and Croissant Crust Philly Steak and Cheese Hot
Pockets,
Walmart Fatburgers, Kroger Ground Beef Mini Sliders and other well-known brands.
The reason for the gigantic recall, says USDA, is that the slaughterhouse
"processed diseased and
unsound animals and carried out these activities without the benefit or
full benefit of federal inspection." The multi-state recall, applying
to all meat produced over a year at the facility, caused Rancho Feeding
Corp. to
close.
The USDA cost-cutting, self-regulation program, called HIMP (Hazard
Analysis and Critical Control Point-Based Inspection Models Project)
will eliminate
800 federal meat inspectors and
is already in operation at about 25 chicken and turkey plants. It
likely played a role in the Rancho Feeding Corp. recall said Stan
Painter, president of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection
Locals, which represents 6,000 inspectors nationwide. “In many places,
managers and veterinarians are being asked to help with inspections,”
because of a shortage of federal inspectors, he said.
Six years ago, Painter spoke out about cutbacks in federal inspection
when undercover video of "downer" cows moved with electric prods,
forklifts and water hoses at the Chino, Ca-based Westland/Hallmark Meat
Co. slaughterhouse surfaced.
Painter warned that
the government's cost-driven move toward self-regulation of private
slaughterhouses amounted to the fox "guarding its own henhouse." The
meat from the cows, which was supplying the National School Lunch
Program, was recalled because of the high likelihood of "downer cows"
carry Mad Cow disease. It became the largest meat recall in US history.
Westland/Hallmark had been cited by the USDA in 2005 for “too much
electric prodding causing animals to get more excited while being driven
towards [the kill] box," suggesting it was receiving sick and weak
cows. But despite the USDA's "7,800 pairs of eyes scrutinizing 6,200
slaughterhouses and food processors across the nation… in the end, it
took an undercover operation by an animal rights group to reveal" the
abuse said the
Los Angeles Times in a
scathing 2008 editorial. Even
before the recent meat inspector cutbacks, the government was
allowing sick and diseased cattle to be processed for the US dinner
table until the Humane Society of the United States intervened.
Westland/Hallmark
ceased operations soon after.
One ailment in cows that could slip through as the number of federal
meat inspectors declines is eye cancer, says Bill Niman, a rancher who
did business for 40 years with Rancho Feeding Corp. "A farmer sends a
cow in with cancer, and he knows it has cancer-eye—it's a growth on the
eye, this is not a microbial situation," he told the
Village Voice. "The inspectors, they know it has cancer-eye. So the farmer shouldn't have sent it, and the inspector should have caught it."
Both the shuttered Rancho Feeding Corp. and Westland/Hallmark were
slaughterhouses where farmers could send and often dump their dairy cows
who could no longer walk. "The cattle are going to go down in the
truck," Rod Bolcao, owner of Chino Livestock Market told the
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin who
was familiar with Westland/Hallmark. They "aren't going to be strong
enough to make the ride" and Westland/Hallmark was there "to pick them
up," he said. Without a slaughterhouse like Westland/Hallmark for cull
cattle, dairymen lose the $400 they would make on the carcass and
instead have to pay "money to euthanize them and haul them out," as much
as $70 to $150, he lamented.
Nowhere did Bolcao address the ethics of working a dairy cow until
the difference between disposing of her and selling her to be
slaughtered for meat is $250.
Rancho Feeding Corp., the only slaughterhouse in the Bay Area, was
also one of the few facilities in its area to slaughter cull dairy cows,
said Niman. Dairy cattle are older and sicker, and once their milking
days are over they are processed into low-grade meat instead of being
retired.
Bolcao and Niman are not the only ag voices recounting the cavalier
disposal of cull dairy cows which owners try to get on the truck to the
slaughterhouse even if the cows will never walk off on their own
steam.
A 2010 report from the
USDA's Inspector General identified
four operations that dumped 211 cows unfit for human food, calling the
operators "individuals who have a history of picking up dairy cows with
drugs in their system and dropping them off at the plant."
Two of the four Mad Cows that have been found in the US since 2003
were also downers, unable to walk. Cow number two, discovered in late
2004, was purchased at a livestock sale by an "order buyer" who sent her
to the slaughterhouse four days later, according to a
government report. When the truck arrived at H&B Packing in Waco, according to the
Star-Telegram, she
was already dead and so she was transported instead to Champion Pet
Food, across town. Even though there were reports that the cow was
unable to walk at the livestock where she was nonetheless sold for meat,
the farmer who owned her told government investigators that “the cow
had always been excitable and had fallen while she was being loaded to
go to the market, but that this was not unusual behavior for her.”
Right.
Cow number three, discovered in March, 2006, was
also a downer who
“had at her side a 2- to 3-week old red Charolais cross female calf” at
the time of her death, according to the USDA report. In both cases, the
government protected the identities of the ranches and allowed them to
resume operations in a month--though the cause of the Mad Cow disease
was never found. With the first US mad cow, found in late 2003,
officials refused to tell the public which restaurants and outlets may have served meat containing the cow.
Instances of cruelty are not the only expected result of the
government's cost-cutting capitulation to private industry by reducing
and eliminating inspection. Federal meat inspectors are also responsible
for a plant’s compliance with the Federal Meat Inspection Act, Poultry
Products Inspection Act and Egg Products Inspection Act. Yet since
Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) was implemented in
2000 (a self-policing measure that was the precursor to HIMP) it is
increasingly hard to do their jobs.
“My plant in Pennsylvania processed 1,800 cows a day, 220 per hour,” federal meat inspector Lester Friedlander told the
press in 2004. Stopping the line cost about $5,000 a minute, so veterinarians are pressured “to look the other way” when violations happen.
Dean Wyatt, a Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) supervisory
public health veterinarian, reiterated Friedlander's charges in
2010 congressional hearings.
Federal meat inspectors are unable to do their job on either end, he
testified, because FSIS district offices often side with plant
management over inspectors, reducing them to powerless figureheads who
are sometimes openly laughed at by plant workers.
Stan Painter of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals repeated the charges in
additional congressional testimony.
"Sometimes, even if we write noncompliance reports, some of the larger
companies use their political muscle to get those overturned at the
agency level or by going to the congressional delegation to get this
inspection staff to back off," he said.
Soon after HACCP was implemented in 2000,
62 percent of meat inspectors in a survey admitted that they had
allowed feces, vomit
and metal shards in food on a daily or weekly basis, which had not
happened before HACCP. Almost 20 percent of inspectors said they’d been
told not to document violations. Eighty percent of 451 inspectors said
that HACCP interfered with their ability to enforce the law and the
public’s right to know about food safety. (No wonder HACCP has been
dubbed “Have a Cup of Coffee and Pray.”)
As food safety recalls increase under government abdication of its
public health duties, the risk of Mad Cow disease, eye cancer and
grotesque levels of cruelty to animals will only increase. February's
recall of top brands let Nestle's Hot Pockets shows that industry will
put profits ahead of self-policing when it can. By eliminating federal
inspectors to save money, the USDA is harming food consumers, animals
and the public trust.
Martha Rosenberg is an investigative health reporter and the author of
"Born With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health (Random House)."
