slaughtering bad cows in America for food consumption
As you know, all meat from Feb 1, 2008 from Westland/Hallmark Meat Company was recalled. This company provides meat to various federal programs. Federal officials suspended operations at Westland/Hallmark after an undercover video from the Humane Society of the United States surfaced showing crippled and sick animals being shoved with forklifts. Now I am not really an animal activist, so I don’t really care that cows have to be moved around. But most of these cows were unable to walk, and it is a known fact that cows that can’t walk have a greater chance of having disease.
Two former employees were charged Friday. Five felony counts of animal cruelty and three misdemeanors were filed against a pen manager. Three misdemeanor counts — illegal movement of a non-ambulatory animal — were filed against an employee who worked under that manager. Both were fired. Over 150 school districts received this meat from the injured cows, thus endangering school children who were eating it.
Personally I think that the USDA needs to tighten up their operations in inspecting the cows. They must tighten up the inspections and make more random visits to the slaugtering factories. If they had done this in the first place, the “downer” cows as they are called, could have been noticed and taken off of the slaughterhouse facilities.
The best way to avoid these cases of downer and mad cow diseases is to buy from a local slaughterhouse. For example, my family buys a cow from a farm up around Bethlehem NH, and gets it slaughtered up there. It’s more convenient and safer than those larger slaughterhouse factories out west.