CALIFORNIA: Downer cow meat recall is perfect storm for new Ag Secretary Shafer - (OpEdNews.com)
February 11, 2008 – 6:58 pmhttp://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_martha_r_080210_downer_cow_meat_reca.htm
Ed Schafer, the new Agriculture Secretary, has the perfect storm on his hands after workers at Hallmark/Westland, a beef supplier to USDA in California, were videotaped tormenting crippled cows (www.hsus.org) presumably to get around “downer” rules that say cows must walk from one pen to the next and back to prove they are not too sick to slaughter.
USDA may order the meat throw out.
Schafer can’t blame the conditions leading to the impounded meat–which is considered dangerous because downers can carry mad cow disease–on iffy overseas regulation. The videotaped mistreatment “occurred under the noses of eight on-site USDA inspectors,” says the Los Angeles Times.
And, according to one activist it was a cakewalk.
“It would take two or three of us to get the cow to stand in front of the inspector, on wobbly legs, and he would say ‘That’s fine,’ ” says the activist who videotaped the slaughterhouse conditions during his six […]
MORE:
http://www.extension.iastate.edu/foodsafety/news/fsnews.cfm?newsid=24191
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