Beef industry, animal advocates duel over video

The cattle industry and animal rights groups bickered over the treatment of beef destined for U.S. dinner plates a day after secret video triggered the nation's largest meat recall.

Undercover video taken at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. of Chino, Calif., shows workers shocking, kicking and shoving debilitated cattle with forklifts, prompting the government to pull 143 million pounds of the company's beef.

Bo Reagan, vice president of research for the Colorado-based National Cattleman's Beef Association, said the videotaped incident was not indicative of how most slaughterhouses operate.

"The welfare of our animals — that's the heart and soul of our operations," Reagan said.

U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines mandate that an inspector must review sick or injured animals, called "downer" cattle, before they can be slaughtered, and that the 1958 Humane Slaughter Act sets strict rules for the humane treatment of animals.

"What happened in this case was that there were some animals that were harvested out of compliance," he said.
Federal regulations call for keeping downed cattle out of the food supply because they may pose a higher risk of contamination from E. coli, salmonella or mad cow disease since they typically wallow in feces and their immune systems are often weak.

Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, which videotaped the alleged abuse, said his organization chose to investigate the Westland/Hallmark plant at random, and said he was skeptical of the cattle industry's practices.

"I think this is the typical rhetorical and typical false assurances that we hear from the industry after glaring problems have been exposed," he said.

Pacelle said it's impossible to say whether the treatment depicted on the video is isolated, but stopped short of calling it widespread.