Beef recall case: Cattle abuse wasn't a rare occurrence
— -- The abuse of non-ambulatory cattle at a California slaughterhouse has renewed calls for a ban on the slaughter of such animals, and newly released government records show such mishandling in past years was more than a rare occurrence.
More than 10% of the humane-slaughter violations issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the 18 months ended March 2004 detailed improper treatment of animals that couldn't walk — mostly cattle, says the Animal Welfare Institute, an animal-protection group.
The finding, drawn from USDA records the institute recently received in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, is included in a report to be released today on humane-slaughter violations. It comes as the USDA steps up checks on conditions at the nation's 900 slaughterhouses following abuses at Westland/Hallmark Meat, now at the heart of the biggest beef recall ever.
An undercover animal-rights worker at the plant used a video camera to document workers moving downed cows with forklifts, sticking them repeatedly with electric prods and spraying water down their noses to make them stand, allegedly to get them to slaughter.
The USDA called the actions "egregious violations of humane-handling regulations." American Meat Institute (AMI) spokeswoman Janet Riley called them an "anomaly."
But the USDA records obtained by the Animal Welfare Institute describe 501 humane-handling or slaughter violations that occurred at other slaughter plants.
At one plant, a downed cow was pushed 15 feet with a forklift. Other companies were cited for dragging downed but conscious animals, letting downed cattle be trampled and stood on by others and, in one case, using "excessive force" with a rope and an electric prod to get a downed cow to stand, the enforcement records say.
The Animal Welfare Institute is a 57-year-old non-profit that seeks to abolish factory farming and achieve humane slaughter. The report's author, Dena Jones, requested the USDA enforcement records in March 2004.The USDA provided them 30 months later, she says.
The records were largely generated before the USDA in 2004 generally prohibited downed cattle from being slaughtered, as a protection against beef infected with mad cow disease getting into the food supply. Cattle that can't walk are believed to be at higher risk of having mad cow disease.
Cattle can be slaughtered if they're standing for an initial preslaughter inspection and then go down because a USDA veterinarian finds that they suffered a non-food-safety injury, such as a broken leg.
The AMI's Riley says the frequency of violations regarding non-ambulatory cattle may have dropped since 2004 because of the USDA's prohibition. It's not known what percentage of inhumane-treatment citations since 2004 related to mishandling of downed animals. The USDA said it would require a FOIA request to release those records.
Attention in Congress
What occurred at Westland/Hallmark led Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to introduce a bill this month to ban the slaughter of all non-ambulatory animals and shut down slaughter facilities that repeatedly violate the rules. Sen. Daniel Akaka,D-Hawaii, a co-sponsor of the bill, has sought a ban since 1992. "Animals that are sick or too weak to stand or walk on their own should not be slaughtered and used for food," Feinstein said Monday in a statement.
The AMI, the meat industry's leading trade group, opposes a ban.
Millions of pounds of wholesome meat would be lost if animals with any injury couldn't be slaughtered, it says.
The AMI estimates the number of non-ambulatory cattle affected by a ban may be as few as 25,000 a year, mostly dairy cows at the end of their milk-producing lives.
Animal-rights activists counter that a ban would increase food safety and shorten the suffering of disabled animals.
"If crippled animals cannot be sold for food, slaughter plants have no reason to prolong their misery to try to get them through the slaughter process," Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, recently told a congressional committee.
Downer cattle are especially troublesome, Pacelle says. They not only carry a risk of mad cow disease, but they are hard to move humanely because they're so big.
Pacelle says the USDA regulation allowing some non-ambulatory cattle to be slaughtered provides financial incentives to slaughter cattle that shouldn't be.
Dairy farmers, who provided many of the cattle to the now-closed Westland/Hallmark, may get a few hundred dollars for a sick cow taken to slaughter vs. paying to have it removed if euthanized on the farm. Slaughterhouses may then seek to recoup costs by slaughtering unfit animals, he says.
The financial toll of slaughtering just a few unfit animals can be huge. Westland/Hallmark isn't expected to reopen given the huge costs of recalling two years of its production. The beef wasn't recalled because of inhumane handling, but because the USDA found evidence that the plant improperly slaughtered some non-ambulatory animals. That raised what USDA officials called a very remote prospect that mad-cow-infected beef got into the food supply.
Redirecting inspectors
Like the AMI, the USDA has said that what occurred at Westland/Hallmark was an isolated case. Still, it has directed inspectors to spend more time the next six weeks checking humane-handling practices.
Jones says the USDA devotes less than 2% of its inspection activities to live animals. The rest has to do with review of meat after slaughter. She says the USDA needs more checks to safeguard the well-being of animals.
"They don't see the violations because they don't spend enough time in areas where live animals are being held," Jones says.
The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said in a 2004 report that humane violations are likely under-reported because USDA inspectors miss them. At Westland/Hallmark, the abuses were uncovered by a worker for the Humane Society of the United States, not the five USDA inspectors at the plant daily.