Workers Allege That a Meat Packer is Slaughtering
Animals Before They're Dead
David Case is a reporter for WWW.TOMPAINE.COM
Julio Rodriguez skins cows at a slaughterhouse. It is hard, gruesome
work, but that's not what bothers him. He's done it for over six years.
Rodriguez (not his real name) has testified against his employer - putting
his job and his family's security at risk - because he says the
slaughterhouse is skinning and dismembering live cows. He alleges that at
the plant -an IBP facility that a New York Times reporter described as "a
hulking concrete complex [where] the powerful smell of dead meat hangs in
the air"--management is in so much of a rush to turn cattle into sirloin
that it won't slow down enough to properly kill the animals.
Normally, a worker known as a "knocker" stuns the cow by driving a steel
bolt into its head. Other workers hang the cow by its hoof from chains, and
slit its jugular vein (by law, the animal must die from bleeding) before it
proceeds down a disassembly line where it is skinned, eviscerated, and
dismembered. But as Rodriguez states in an affidavit, at the IBP
slaughterhouse in Wallula, Washington, the cattle are processed so quickly
that they're put on the line while they're still conscious. They're cut up,
he says, while they're literally alive and kicking.
"You notice cows are alive because they're making noises and they try to
kick a lot. And when workers try to stick the knife in the cow, they're
trying to kick and sometimes they have to stick the knife in between their
legs to cut their nerves so they won't be moving, they won't be trying to
kick," Rodriguez testified.
Another worker, who has been at the plant for more than a decade, said that
because of the chain speed, workers cut "the legs, the stomach, the neck,
[and] cut off the feet while the cow is breathing."
"The cattle go down the line for many minutes and they're still alive," the
worker testified.
Rodriguez's affidavit is part of a petition that alleges that "roughly 10 to
perhaps 30 percent" of the animals at the IBP plant "proceed through the
skinning and dismemberment process in a fully conscious state." It also
states that workers have been injured, "kicked by frantic animals moving
along the conveyor [and] suffer[ing] contusions, serious stab wounds, and
lost fingers and teeth."
Workers have also videotaped struggling animals hung from slaughterhouse
chains and skinned while they are still alive. Some of the video was
featured on a Seattle NBC affiliate KING 5 news report.
The petition, filed with the Washington State Department of Agriculture and
Attorney General, was spearheaded by the Humane Farming Association, and
signed by a legion of public interest groups, including the Government
Accountability Project and the Humane Society. It included videotape as well
as over a dozen affidavits from workers, several of which were obtained by
www.TomPaine.com .
IBP strongly denies the allegations. "We are extremely concerned by what we
saw on the videotape and do not condone the livestock handling practices
that were shown," the company wrote in a statement. The company says that it
has training programs and a system in place to assure proper slaughter.
Since the allegations were made public it has installed "surveillance
cameras to provide continuous oversight of animal handling practices."
Implying that disgruntled employees may have intentionally strung up the
live cattle to harm the company, IBP stated that it would also investigate
the possibility that the workers may have "mishandled the cattle for the
camera's benefit."
Rosemary Mucklow, the Executive Director of the National Meat Association
(of which IBP is not a member) says "I seriously doubt that what was alleged
actually happened." After stunning, she says, cattle will exhibit "certain
muscle reflexes-legs may shudder or jump. These are reflexes, and will
happen several minutes after the animal is dead." But, she says, the animal
will feel nothing.
Dr. Temple Grandin of Colorado State University, an expert on livestock
handling that IBP flew in on a corporate jet as the allegations were
unfolding, says she was disturbed by the videotape. "There's definitely some
bad stuff on that tape. I'm not defending IBP. There was a live cow hung
upside down from the chain and another on the ground in the stunning box.
These are definitely bad things."
As the company reported in a press release, Dr. Grandin "found that cattle
were being stunned and slaughtered properly at the plant." But in an
interview, she stresses that she also found a number of problems. "By the
time I get there of course they're on their best behavior," she says. But
before stunning, "there was still balking and backing up, and [workers were]
prodding the cattle with an electric prod," implying that the cattle were
not properly handled. Well-handled cattle - which do not understand death,
according to Dr. Grandin - will enter the stunning box calmly. Maintaining
that calmness is essential to assuring that the animals are properly
stunned.
But Grandin stresses that she highly doubts that IBP was slaughtering live
animals. "Cutting up live cattle - that's something that has not been
happening" in recent years, or at large-scale facilities. It is extremely
unlikely to happen in a big plant like IBP's, she says, in part because of
the way such a plant is set up, and in part because it would pose so much
danger to employees that they would immediately revolt. "The worst thing
that could have happened was that the live animal on the video could have
been bled live, but he could not have been dismembered alive."
While Washington State officials refuse to comment while the investigation
is underway, an attorney at the Washington state attorney general's office
commented that the "allegations are very serious and they are taken
seriously," and that officials are working to determine whether they are
true. Following the video and petition, a team of federal and state
inspectors conducted an inspection of the plant, and found "no current
evidence" of wrongdoing.
Gary Dahl, a USDA inspector who has ten years experience on a kill floor and
who viewed the tapes says "There was some stuff that was inconclusive, where
I couldn't make a determination. But clearly other animals appeared to be
alive. I saw one animal that was clearly tortured."
Gary Valen of the Humane Society, a signatory on the petition, said that his
organization has not directly investigated the Wallula plant, but he
believes that the allegations are highly credible. According to Valen, an
ongoing Humane Society investigation suggests that the problems documented
in the petition from fast slaughter line speed are neither unique to the IBP
plant nor uncommon in the U.S.
MAKING ALL FOOD FAST FOOD
The workers' testimony is a dramatic example of a problem that concerns many
who watch the meat processing industry: ever-escalating speed in the
nation's slaughterhouses and meat processing facilities.
Under a new inspection system implemented by the USDA which has been phased
in over the last few years, plants have much greater control over their
operations.
The new system was an effort to improve food safety, and there is some
evidence that it is working. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention
estimates that food contamination annually causes 76 million illnesses,
325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths and costs the nation $37 billion.
A recent CDC study has indicated that the new system appears to have reduced
that toll. Another study, by the USDA, found a reduction in the incidence of
salmonella in meat, evidence that the food supply is getting cleaner, the
Department insists.
To the meat industry, the new program is a long-awaited move away from
government command and control oversight, enabling companies to determine
for themselves how to achieve food safety. "It's a paradigm shift -- [now]
it's the industry's responsibility to produce safe, wholesome meat, and it's
the government's responsibility to make sure the industry does that,"
explains the National Meat Association's Mucklow.
In practice, that means that USDA inspectors are essentially shifting away
from a traditional inspection model of checklists and direct oversight of an
entire processing line, towards reviewing microbe data collected by the
company and performing occasional spot checks on carcasses.
Yet in handing over control to the companies the Department removed
traditional safety measures and some of the checks by government inspectors
that industry long complained slowed down operations. Under the new system,
companies are now free to decide for themselves how to produce safe food.
Many companies choose to sterilize the meat toward the end of the line
rather than taking the extra time to prevent contamination in the first
place.
That, in turn has enabled them to work more quickly, fueling a race to turn
cattle, chicken and pigs into meat at an unprecedented clip. Some meat
packers are making record profits without raising prices at the supermarket.
But critics say the speed of processing is endangering not only animals and
workers, but also possibly consumers, despite the figures cited by USDA and
CDC. They contend that fast food processing means sloppy processing that
exacerbates contamination from pathogens. Food-borne illness, they argue,
has decreased not because of better slaughtering, but because the industry
is dousing the food with more chemicals than ever.
Representatives of the workers at the Wallula plant have alleged that the
pressure to work fast is so great that they don't have time to clean off a
piece of meat when it falls on the floor. They complain that, in the
slaughter department, if they get feces on their hands they don't have
enough time to wash off, so they end up contaminating every animal they
touch. They say that when they cut into an abscess they don't have time to
properly sanitize the ensuing contamination (abscesses hidden within the
meat tend to explode when workers cut through them, soiling adjacent meat
and workers). Instead, they say, they hastily wipe down the area and
continue working.
At the IBP plant, the petition alleges that "as conscious cattle move down
the production line, their thrashing causes sterile muscle tissue to become
contaminated by feces and other adulterants. Workers' ability to trim
contaminants from animals is severely compromised by both animal movements
and increased line speeds." Such contamination, which occurs during
evisceration or skinning (animals often bring manure from the feed lots into
the slaughterhouse on their hides), can be the source of much food-borne
illness.
Again, IBP disputes the claims. In a written response, the company states
"These appear to be the same false, union created allegations we have heard
before. First, it is a known biological fact that an animal can continue to
make involuntary movements after it has died. The untrained observer may
misinterpret this as a sign of life. Second, there is no such movement
taking place when the animal is skinned and the trimming process begins.
Third, the hide is still on when these 'involuntary movements' occur. There
is no exposed flesh or sterile tissue that can be contaminated from such
thrashing."
The company indicates that line speed policy, determined by industrial
engineers, allows time to sanitize product and work areas that might be
contaminated by feces or abscesses, and that management constantly monitors
to make sure that sanitary procedures are followed.
It's not just workers who complain about food contamination. USDA inspectors
say that the line speed means that they're now expected somehow to oversee
the safety of meat that is traveling past them at speeds of two or three
birds per second. "It's pretty much a steady stream," says Alvin Sewell, of
the inspector's union. "Imagine doing that for eight hours."
They also complain that they no longer have access to the whole slaughter or
processing line as they used to. And when they see violations of good
sanitation practices, they have lost much of their authority to take action.
Instead, they're told to let the plant's self-inspection program work.
At the IBP plant in Wallula, for example, workers say that the inspectors
seldom visit the area where the cattle are killed. The inspectors' union
blames that, in part, on the new system. "Dramatic increases in line speeds
and new inspection policies which significantly reduce our enforcement
authority; and little to no access to the areas of the plants where animals
are killed, have all significantly hampered our ability to ensure" proper
slaughtering practices, according to Arthur C. Hughes of the National Joint
Council of Food Inspection Locals.
Chemical baths and steam treatments can later neutralize some or all of the
contamination that may make its way past workers. But not everyone agrees
that this technical fix is the best solution.
Even with chemical sterilization, according to Felicia Nestor of the
Government Accountability Project, allowing the meat to be exposed to feces
makes it much more likely that consumers will get sick. "It's an age old
concept that you control contamination during the butchering of the animal,"
she says. But instead, we allow meat to become contaminated "because it's
much faster, you can slaughter more animals. But it's a net loss for food
safety. It means either more deadly contamination or more chemically
sterilized contamination - which has its own drawbacks - in the food."
Nancy Donley, president of Safe Tables Our Priority (STOP), an advocacy
group made up of parents and friend of food-borne illness victims, agrees
that meat packers are working too fast. "The line speeds are too fast,
they're doing things too quickly. The meat packers want the numbers in order
to generate profit, but they're doing things too quickly and that's when the
problems occur." In 1993, Donley lost her only child, who was six years old,
to E.coli O157:H7 from hamburger. To her outrage, the meat carried the USDA
seal of approval.
Tragedies like Donley's helped inspire the USDA to improve the nation's food
inspection system, which had changed little since President Theodore
Roosevelt introduced it at the turn of the twentieth century. Many food
safety advocates agree that there have been some improvements under the new
system.
One such improvement is pathogenic testing - applauded as a first step in
complimenting the timeworn poke and sniff methods with real science. The
Department has also declared a zero tolerance for E.coli, and it may soon
phase in more formal testing regimes for pathogens, like listeria and
campylobacter, the latter of which is the nation's most common cause of
food-borne illness.
While the pathogenic testing is currently far from comprehensive (inspectors
typically test at most one specimen per day for salmonella, and a plant may
go months without a single test) it has helped clean up the food supply by
"putting the fear of God in the meat packing industry," as one observer puts
it. Many corporations have invested in technology to ensure compliance. For
example, while salmonella is still present in about 10 percent of chickens,
it's down by half since over the past two years, according to a USDA study.
Those improvements aside, critics say that under the new system USDA has
largely relinquished its authority for food inspections. They say the
program is a corporate honor system riddled with conflicts of interest.
According to critics, the new program transfers the burden of food safety
from trained and independent government inspectors to employees who may not
receive adequate training. More importantly, experience has shown that
vigilant company inspectors can be intimidated by management. GAP's Nestor,
who often works with whistleblowers, says "the vast majority of inspectors
say that often company employees will secretly tell them" about company
wrongdoings, a fact that illustrates how management pressure on company
inspectors can foil the system.
"The government says if you have a [self-inspection] program we won't
inspect you as much," says Bill Marler, a lawyer with Marler Clarke, a firm
that has represented many food-borne illness victims. "That's a
mistake-there has to still be strong government oversight. Very few
companies are going to report their own violations."
For its part, USDA denies that inspections have been scaled back, or that
inspector authority has been curbed.
But an audit by the department's inspector general, released on June 21,
clearly states that the department needs to do more to ensure food safety
under the new program. The audit faulted the inspection service for not
adequately testing for pathogens in the food supply, for relinquishing too
much of its authority and for lacking a system of financial penalties for
unsafe plants. It concluded that the inspection service "needs to command a
more aggressive presence in the inspection and verification process," and
that it has "reduced its oversight short of what is prudent and necessary
for the protection of the consumer."
The bottom line, according to Randy Wurtle of the inspectors' union, is that
fewer people are getting sick because of what the USDA refers to as
"interventions." He says "the plants are producing much filthier, dirtier
meat, but they're using a greater mass of chemicals. If consumers knew what
they were doing-if they knew they were eating sanitized feces-they wouldn't
be happy."
______________________________
source: David Case is a reporter for WWW.TOMPAINE.COM
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