Sunday, February 17, 2008

Happy Cows come from California?

143 million pounds of beef were recalled from a California slaughterhouse, making it the largest beef recall in the United States. The recall is a result of the cattle not receiving proper inspections and an animal-abuse investigation. Of the 143 million pounds, 37 million went to schools, much of which was already eaten. On the bright side, despite the recall, "officials said the health threat was likely small". To me, it seems like the recall and suspension of operations at the slaughterhouse is more of a punishment for the slaughterhouse than a real health risk. Apparently, there were videos from the Humane society of some of the slaughterhouse workers "kicking, shocking, and otherwise abusing "downer" animals that were apparently too sick or injured to walk into the slaughterhouse". I agree that the slaughterhouse should be punished for abusing animals, but it seems like the government might need to more actively regulate their meat inspections to avoid situations like this sooner.



Beef recall from California slaughterhouse

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I found a video from msnbc on youtube, and it contains segments of the video footage of the horrible treatment of the cows. In one of the footage I saw on some other channel, it showed an employee driving a forklift at a cow and pushing it witht he two iron prongs.

I believe the health risk factor, as the video above reported, comes from the fact that the company did not have veterinarian check up on the cows, even as some were sick and unable to move.

Sick...

Anonymous said...

Also, I'm pretty sure "Happy cows come from California" only applies to those cows that produce milk, cheeses, and yogurt, and not the ones going to the slaughter houses...

Happy cows come from California, but not all cows from California are happy... But it's a nice, eye-catching title.

:)

Anonymous said...

It's kinda funny that you can reprimand a slaughterhouse for animal abuse

Tara C said...

Yeah, I heard about that. My dad was furious about it, and he showed me the news about it on TV. Apparently, even though they recalled it, almost all of the meat had already been eaten, so the recall was useless.
They snuck cameras into one of the farms, and they got pictures of the cows who were so weak that they couldn't even stand up. They used fork lifts to try and shove them to their feet, and they shocked them repeatedly with cattle prods to try and force them to stand.
And these guys have been getting away with this for apparently a very long time. Whenever the inspection guys come, they pretend to be humane, but once they're gone, they abuse the animals. It's terrible. No one should be allowed to get away with that. I don't care what excuses they have.