Animal mistreatment goes unchecked at slaughterhouses

April 13, 2001

Review finds law governing butchering standards often violated

Among the findings:

- One Texas plant, Supreme Beef Packers in Ladonia, had 22 violations in six

months. During one inspection, federal officials found nine live cattle

dangling from an overhead chain. But managers at the plant, which announced

last fall it was ceasing operations, resisted USDA warnings, saying its

practices were no different from those of others in the industry.

- At the Farmers Livestock Cooperative processing plant in Hawaii,

inspectors documented 14 humane-slaughter violations in as many months.

Records from 1997 and 1998 describe hogs that were walking and squealing

after being stunned as many as four times. In a memo to the USDA, the

company said it fired the stunner and increased monitoring of slaughtering.

- At an Excel Corp. beef plant in Fort Morgan, Colo., production was halted

for a day in 1998 after workers allegedly cut off the leg of a live cow

whose limbs had become wedged in a piece of machinery. In imposing the

sanction, U.S. inspectors cited a string of violations in the previous two

years, including the cutting and skinning of live cattle. The company,

responding to one such charge, contended that it was normal for animals to

blink and arch their backs after being stunned and such " muscular reaction "

can occur up to six hours after death. " None of these reactions indicate the

animal is still alive, " the company wrote to the USDA.

- Hogs, unlike cattle, are dunked in tanks of hot water after they are

stunned, to soften the hide for skinning. As a result, a botched slaughter

condemns some hogs to being scalded and drowned. Secret videotape from an

Iowa pork plant shows hogs squealing and kicking as they are being lowered

into the water.

USDA documents and interviews with inspectors

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