aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, February 18, 2008

Largest Meat Recall in U.S. History

Under-reported and taken in stride, I’ll be interested to learn more. WaPo:

The Agriculture Department has ordered the largest meat recall in its history—143 million pounds of beef, a California meatpacker’s entire production for the past two years—because the company did not prevent ailing animals from entering the U.S. food supply, officials said yesterday.

Despite the breadth of the sanction, USDA officials underscored their belief that the meat, distributed by Westland Meat, poses little or no hazard to consumers, and that most of it was eaten long ago.

Uh, that’s good news???

The recall comes less than three weeks after the release of a videotape showing what the USDA later called “egregious violations” of federal animal care regulations by employees of a Westland partner, Hallmark Meat Packing in Chino.

For now I’ll say this…

I think we’ve come to understand that if a child is abusive to harmless animals it is indicative of problems likely to emerge in adulthood. It would not surprise us to learn later that the child grew into an abusive adult, say, or a criminal type.

What does it indicate of our modern civilization that we so wantonly treat the animals we eat with a callous and needless machine-like cruelty? I don’t think it says anything good. And I think that’s why the food industry does everything in its power to hide its practices from the American public.

If we knew what they did, we would not stand for it. We must open our eyes.

RELATED: Boston Herald story today, WaPo on the earlier violations, Humane Society video.