I'm confused. Is today Presidents' Day, or Groundhog Day? The news cycle's stuck in a wretched rut: the aftermath of yet another school shooting; another suicide bombing in Afghanistan; another story about how the FDA left a dangerous drug on the market while thousands died needlessly; oh, and yet another beef recall.
But this recall--143 million pounds of beef from a California meat-packing plant-sets a new record. The previous record was a mere 35 million pounds, back in 1999.
Will the meat from the Westland Meat Packing Company in Chino make you sick? Depends on what the meaning of "sick" is. If, by "sick", you mean, will it give you mad cow disease, or E. coli, or salmonella? There's only a "remote possibility," according to Dick Raymond, undersecretary of agriculture for food safety.
If, however, by "sick," you mean nauseated by the gut-wrenching undercover video depicting Westland employees abusing "downer" cows--i.e. those too ill or injured to stand ( and perhaps not fit to eat)--well, then, the answer is definitely yes. The footage, brought to you courtesy of the Humane Society, shows workers "kicking cows, jabbing them near their eyes, ramming them with a forklift and shooting high-intensity water up their noses in an effort to force them to their feet for slaughter," as CNN reports.
Westland Meat's president, Steve Mendell, was naturally shocked, shocked, at the evidence of bovine water boarding and other agribiz atrocities documented by the Humane Society. When confronted about the video by the Washington Post, Mendell "expressed disbelief that employees used stun guns to get sick or injured animals on their feet for inspection:"
"That's impossible," he said, adding that "electrical prods are not allowed on the property."
Asked whether his employees use fork lifts to get moribund animals off the ground, he said: "I can't imagine that."
Asked whether water was sprayed up animals' noses to get them to stand up, he said: "That's absolutely not true."
"We have a massive humane treatment program here that we follow to the nth degree, so this doesn't even sound possible," Mendell said. "I don't stand out there all day, but to me it would be next to impossible."
Well, sure, as the head of a meat-packing plant, Mendell is too busy generating his own brand of bullshit to wade into the fecal matter coating the downer cows his company's been slaughtering and shipping off to school lunches and programs for the needy (guess they won't be getting another one of those Supplier of the Year awards for the National School Lunch Program like the one the USDA gave Westland for the 2004-2005 school year.)
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