All that year the animals worked like slaves. But they were happy in their work; they grudged no effort or sacrifice, well aware that everything they did was for the benefit of themselves and those of their kind who would come after them, and not for a pack of idle, thieving human beings.
Animal Farm
George Orwell, 1945
I originally intended this post merely to note Dr. Dean Wyatt’s testimony last week before a House Committee - as reported by Jean-Pierre Ruizon on Examiner.com - about “how the agency supports unhealthy practices at the national slaughterhouses and endangers the nation's meat food supply.” Dr. Wyatt, a public health supervisory veterinarian with the USDA's Food and Safety Inspection Services (FSIS) testified “to numerous instances where FSIS executives overruled his and other inspectors' citations of slaughterhouses' abuses…” and “that he was directed by his superiors to "drastically cut back" the time spent on ensuring that animals destined for food were treated humanely.” This piece reminded me of a television commercial I had seen a week earlier promoting the ‘natural’ line of sliced deli meats from one of the largest industrial processed meat producers!!! This momentary mental connection amused me at first, but then it ticked me off leading to even more recollections about Big Ag factory farms. It was quite amazing what I found online when I searched on phrases like ‘cow abuse.’
One of the points of Dr. Wyatt’s testimony in part concerned Bushway Packing, a slaughterhouse in Vermont, An clandestine video - WARNING, it is graphic - was shot by an undercover Humane Society agent at Bushway last October that depicted the normal course of business at this industrial calf slaughterhouse. USDA inspectors are in the plant when much of this video is shot. According to the Examiner piece “Prior to his testimony, Dr. Wyatt had issued orders to shut down of Vermont’s Bushway Packing on three different occasions. Each time, Dr. Wyatt’s superiors overruled his orders and allowed the plant to reopen without it addressing the underlying health and humane issues.”And if you are interested their is the video - WARNING, it is graphic - taken by Mercy For Animals in early 2009 at Willet Dairy in Locke, New York, the state’ largest dairy factory farm. Of course, none of this treatment affects the quality of the milk or the hamburger that these poor dairy cows eventually become after they are milked dry in just 1/3 of their traditional ‘pastured’ lives.
These videos only created minor stirrings compared to the video - WARNING, it is graphic - taken early in 2008 by the Humane Society during an investigation of the Hallmark Meat Packing Co. in Chino, California - you know, California, the home of “happy cows.” In this case the USDA suspended Hallmark parent, the Westland Meat Company the same day this video hit, and it pulled its inspectors 5 days later thus closing the plant. Two weeks later the USDA recalled over 143 million pounds of beef from Hallmark/Westland Meat Co. In May of that year, the Bush Administration’s Secretary of Agriculture announced his intention to close the downer loophole…the downer loophole? Watching this video I was aghast; living in Seattle, I was well aware that Secretary of Agriculture had banned the use of ‘downer’ cattle and cows shortly after the Mad Cow incident here in Washington in late 2003. What I didn’t know was that due to pressure from Big Ag the USDA quietly loosened the ban in 2007 - as of January 19, 2009, the outgoing Secretary of Agriculture had not closed the loophole. Fortunately, The Obama Administration’s Secretary of Agriculture closed the loophole in 2009, except for calves...
Just so you don’t leave with the impression that it’s just cattle and dairy cows that live Big Ag’s industrial factory life there is this Humane Society video - WARNING, it is graphic - from September 2008 was taken at an Iowa hog CAFO that supplies Hormel. If you think you can find refuge in poultry and eggs, this Mercy For Animals video - WARNING, it is graphic - was taken in August, 2009 at Hy-Line International in Spencer, Iowa the world’s largest industrial egg-laying chicken hatchery. If you want to get a sense of what it’s like at the factory that produces those $1/dozen eggs, watch this video taken in March, 2009 at Quality Egg of New England in Turner, Maine, and this video from 2007 about broiler chicken factory farms here in the US…and there are more!!!
Even though many of these videos have been shot and edited by organizations that advocate a vegan diet, that is not the purpose of this post. I am a ‘died in the wool’ meat eater, but if I were forced, by a lack of access to humanely raised meat, to eat Big Ag’s factory farm meat, dairy, poultry and eggs, I would become a vegan. Now, if one were to suppose that these videos represented the worst cases in the industry, and not ‘typical’ industry practice as the videos claim, given the industry’s modus operandi of silence and secrecy, do you want to roll the dice with your health and the health of your children. Bringing it all back to Dr. Wyatt’s testimony, who is the USDA working for, “We The People,” or Big Ag? The next time you order from the “Dollar Menu” have a “Grand Slam Breakfast,” or buy a 10-pound pack of Hickory Smoked ‘Natural’ Bacon from the big box store, remember these videos, and you have the answer to that persistent question, “How do they do it”?
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