Westland Meat Company/Hallmark Meat Packing own and operate a slaughterhouse in Chino, CA that they say has operated “under the strictest possible standards for animal welfare, occupational health and safety and food safety precautions for 10 years.”

Today, however, that Chino slaughterhouse is shut down because the Humane Society of the United States went public with a powerful video tape that shows downed animals being brutally forced through the packing house.

“The video appears to show employees jabbing downed cows in the eyes, using repeated electric shocks, dragging them with forklifts and tormenting them with water in efforts to move them into the slaughter chutes,” reports the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin.

“Downer Cows,” meaning animals that are not able to rise off the ground on their own, cannot be slaughtered for human use out of control for controlling diseases like Mad Cow.

One thing is certain; the video was powerful enough to rattle the United States Department of Agriculture. USDA was not only one of Westland’s regulators; it was one of its biggest customers. The government agency bought 27 million pounds of beef from Westland last year for the school lunch program.

Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer promised an investigation by USDA’s various arms.
"We are confident in our inspection system and the food safety regulations that ensure the safety and wholesomeness of the food supply. Among the federal safeguards in place, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) prohibits non-ambulatory disabled cattle and cattle tissue identified as specified risk materials for use in human food,” Schafer said a prepared statement.

Someone from the Humane Society took the video while working undercover inside the packing plant last fall. Two employees identified in the video by the company were immediately fired.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (11)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

If cattle in the United States ever started showing up with Mad Cow disease in any significant numbers, the outcry for locating and tracking histories on the impacted animals would probably be over-whelming.

After 9-11, we all recall the sharp elbows that were exchanged over who did and who did not “connect the dots.”

So it’s not surprising that government and industry have been working on a solution for tracking animals. It’s called the National Animal Identification System or just NAIS for short.

At this point, NAIS has managed to work itself into a gray area as a program that is not mandatory, but one that might require you to volunteer for it. For example, if your kid’s 4H animal is going to get into the fair or if you want to sell to certain feedlots.

So now opposition is developing to NAIS. Its being called everything from “the Agriculture Gestapo” to “the Barnyard Big Brother.”

The LA Times last week published a long article on all of this. It reported that:

A Bush administration initiative, the National Animal Identification System is meant to provide a modern tool for tracking disease outbreaks within 48 hours, whether natural or the work of a bio-terrorist. Most farm animals, even exotic ones such as llamas, will eventually be registered. Information will be kept on every farm, ranch or stable. And databases will record every animal movement from birth to slaughterhouse, including trips to the vet and county fairs.

But the system is spawning a grass-roots revolt.

To read the entire story, go here.

We wanted to more fully understand the objections to NAIS. The Farm & Ranch Freedom Alliance lists “the problems with NAIS” including:

[] Massive intrusion into people’s lives: individuals will have to provide detailed information about their property, businesses, and their own movements to government and private databases; 

[]  Burden on property rights: the premises registration number will attach to the land forever, and people’s rights to manage their land and animals will be restricted; 
[] High costs: registration, tagging, and reporting all carry costs in both time and money;   Loss of small farmers and ranchers: many will be unable to afford the program, or unwilling to accept the government intrusion; 
[]  Damage to the economy: businesses that rely on small farmers, such as sales barns, supply stores, and even tourism, will be harmed; 
[]  Reduced choices and increased costs for consumers; 
[]  Violation of many Americans’ religious beliefs; and 
[]  Increased government bureaucracy and waste of taxpayer dollars.

We think  the Alliance's list of "problems" can be taken apart pretty easily.  If costs to the small farmer or rancher are an issue,  that can and should be addressed.  But NAIS in some form or another is probably needed in the world in which we live.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

If you want to catch the world's attention,  there's probably not a better place to do it than the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.   The death last week of a Kansas man due to the rare brain disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease caught  the Exchange's attention.  Today, it was celebrating the fact that it appears there is no relation to this man's demise and Mad Cow disease.

Here's what  Reuters is reporting out of Chicago:

Preliminary tests indicate that a 53-year-old Kansas man, who died on Friday, had the rare brain disease Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which is not related to mad cow disease, health officials said on Wednesday.

However, it will be several weeks before final tests are completed to positively identify the disease.  A physician who treated the man had said the brain disease was "not the mad cow version," said a spokesman for the Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, where the man was treated.

Reuters said the cattle market early on Wednesday was filled with speculation  that the man might have died from variant CJD, which scientists believe can be contracted by eating contaminated parts from cattle with mad cow disease.  Reuters calmed the waters, saying:

Normal CJD is naturally occurring and the Kansas Department of Health said the state averages about three cases a year. "We have no reason to believe it is not anything but CJD," said Joe Blubaugh, spokesman for the Kansas Department of Health.

The United States has had three cases of mad cow disease in cattle.

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease has taken the life of a 53-year old Colby, Kansas man.  He died Friday, Jan. 11, 2008 at  the Wesley Medical Center in Wichita where he where he had been a patient since December. .

Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease is a rare disease that affects the central nervous system and turns brain tissue spongy. 

Karen Shideler reported on the death today in the Wichita Eagle.   She says:

One variation of the disease is the so-called mad cow disease but the human form of that has never been seen in the United States in someone who hadn't had exposure elsewhere.

Because the incubation period for the disease is years or even decades, health officials don't know how or when the Kansas man got the disease, nor what its source may have been.

They won't know for several weeks, until testing is complete, which form of the disease he had.

The diagnosis at this time is Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or CJD, said Wesley spokesman Paul Petitte. The only way to confirm CJD is through testing of brain tissue, which will be done through the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center.

Kansas has an average of three CJD cases a year, according to Joe Blubaugh, spokesman for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

Nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one to two people per million have a spontaneous case of CJD each year. On average, 250 to 300 cases of CJD are reported annually.

In addition to the spontaneous cases, a certain form of CJD can come from consumption of beef that has been infected with mad cow disease, as happened in Great Britain in the mid-1990s. The United States and other countries implemented various measures in response, to prevent the disease and better track infected cattle.

CJD can also come from blood transfusions, and it can be hereditary in very rare cases.

Richard Liepins, who was the attending physician in the local case, said, "We have no idea of how he possibly contracted this."

Go here for the rest of the story.

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Nebraska game officials have found 18 deer with chronic wasting disease out of  3,310 tested. 

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a transmissible neurological disease of deer and elk that produces small lesions in brains of infected animals. It is characterized by loss of body condition, behavioral abnormalities and death. CWD is classified as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE), and is similar to mad cow disease in cattle and scrapie in sheep, according to the Chronic Wasting Disease Alliance.

One of the diseased deer was found in Hall County, Nebraska and that caused a long look at the situation by Mark Coddington at the Grand Island Independent.   He notes that most CWD-infected deer in Nebraska are found in the Panhandle, but there were cases scattered about the state as far as 200 miles away from the enemic area.

The CWD Alliance notes that:

"Infectious agents of CWD are neither bacteria nor viruses, but are hypothesized to be prions. Prions are infectious proteins without associated nucleic acids.

"Although CWD is a contagious fatal disease among deer and elk, research suggests that humans, cattle and other domestic livestock are resistant to natural transmission. While the possibility of human infection remains a concern, it is important to note there have been no verified cases of humans contracting CWD. "

Coddington reports that the rate of CWD in Nebraska at about 1 percent is far from the 5 percent rate in Colorado and Wyoming.  "The red flag for us is that it has spread,: says Bruce Trindle, who heads up big game research for Nebraska.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

     The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)  is going with a rule-change that makes it more likely that a "mad cow" could make its way into the United States, but two powerful Western Senators are trying to block it.   Democrat Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Republican Mike Enzi  of Wyoming explained why they are seeking U.S. Senate action to block the USDA rule-change in the this guest editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  It ran on New Year's Day.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link