they die piece by piece...but..have it yer way

[Guest guest]

'They Die Piece by Piece'

 

By Joby Warrick

 

Second of two articles

 

PASCO, Wash.--It takes 25 minutes to turn a live steer into steak at the

modern slaughterhouse where Ramon Moreno works. For 20 years, his post was

" second-legger, " a job that entails cutting hocks off carcasses as they

whirl past at a rate of 309 an hour.

 

The cattle were supposed to be dead before they got to Moreno. But too

often they weren't.

 

" They blink. They make noises, " he said softly. " The head moves, the eyes

are wide and looking around. "

 

Still Moreno would cut. On bad days, he says, dozens of animals reached

his station clearly alive and conscious. Some would survive as far as the

tail cutter, the belly ripper, the hide puller. " They die, " said Moreno,

" piece by piece. "

 

Under a 23-year-old federal law, slaughtered cattle and hogs first must be

" stunned " -- rendered insensible to pain -- with a blow to the head or an

electric shock. But at overtaxed plants, the law is sometimes broken, with

cruel consequences for animals as well as workers. Enforcement records,

interviews, videos and worker affidavits describe repeated violations of the

Humane Slaughter Act at dozens of slaughterhouses, ranging from the

smallest, custom butcheries to modern, automated establishments such as the

sprawling IBP Inc. plant here where Moreno works.

 

" In plants all over the United States, this happens on a daily basis, "

said Lester Friedlander, a veterinarian and formerly chief government

inspector at a Pennsylvania hamburger plant. " I've seen it happen. And I've

talked to other veterinarians. They feel it's out of control. "

 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees the treatment of animals in

meat plants, but enforcement of the law varies dramatically. While a few

plants have been forced to halt production for a few hours because of

alleged animal cruelty, such sanctions are rare.

 

For example, the government took no action against a Texas beef company

that was cited 22 times in 1998 for violations that included chopping hooves

off live cattle. In another case, agency supervisorsfailed to take action on

multiple complaints of animal cruelty at a Florida beef plant and fired an

animal health technician for reporting the problems to the Humane Society.

The dismissal letter sent to the technician, Tim Walker, said his dislosure

had " irreparably damaged " the agency's relations with the packing plant.

 

" I complained to everyone -- I said, 'Lookit, they're skinning live cows

in there,' " Walker said. " Always it was the same answer: 'We know it's

true. But there's nothing we can do about it.' "

 

In the past three years, a new meat inspection systemthat shifted

responsibility to industry has made it harder to catch and report cruelty

problems, some federal inspectors say. Under the new system, implemented in

1998, the agency no longer tracks the number of humane-slaughter violations

its inspectors find each year.

 

Some inspectors are so frustrated they're asking outsiders for help: The

inspectors' union last spring urged Washington state authorities to crack

down on alleged animal abuse at the IBP plant in Pasco. In a statement, IBP

said problems described by workers in its Washington state plant " do not

accurately represent the way we operate our plants. We take the issue of

proper livestock handling very seriously. "

 

But the union complained that new government policies and faster

production speeds at the plant had " significantly hampered our ability to

ensure compliance. " Several animal welfare groups joined in the petition.

 

" Privatization of meat inspection has meant a quiet death to the already

meager enforcement of the Humane Slaughter Act, " said Gail Eisnitz of the

Humane Farming Association, a group that advocates better treatment of farm

animals. " USDA isn't simply relinquishing its humane-slaughter oversight to

the meat industry, but is -- without the knowledge and consent of Congress

-- abandoning this function altogether. "

 

The USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service, which is responsible for meat

inspection, says it has not relaxed its oversight. In January, the agency

ordered a review of 100 slaughterhouses. An FSIS memo reminded its 7,600

inspectors they had an " obligation to ensure compliance " with

humane-handling laws.

 

The review comes as pressure grows on both industry and regulators to

improve conditions for the 155 million cattle, hogs, horses and sheep

slaughtered each year. McDonald's and Burger King have been subject to

boycotts by animal rights groups protesting mistreatment of livestock.

 

As a result, two years ago McDonald's began requiring suppliers to abide

by the American Meat Institute's Good Management Practices for Animal

Handling and Stunning. The company also began conducting annual audits of

meat plants. Last week, Burger King announced it would require suppliers to

follow the meat institute's standards.

 

" Burger King Corp. takes the issues of food safety and animal welfare very

seriously, and we expect our suppliers to comply, " the company said in a

statement.

 

Industry groups acknowledge that sloppy killing has tangible consequences

for consumers as well as company profits. Fear and pain cause animals to

produce hormones that damage meat and cost companies tens of millions of

dollars a year in discarded product, according to industry estimates.

 

Industry officials say they also recognize an ethical imperative to treat

animals with compassion. Science is blurring the distinction between the

mental processes of humans and lower animals -- discovering, for example,

that even the lowly rat may dream. Americans thus are becoming more

sensitive to the suffering of food animals, even as they consume increasing

numbers of them.

 

" Handling animals humanely, " said American Meat Institute President J.

Patrick Boyle, " is just the right thing to do. "

 

Clearly, not all plants have gotten the message.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Post computer analysis of government enforcement records found 527

violations of humane-handling regulations from 1996 to 1997, the last years

for which complete records were available. The offenses range from

overcrowded stockyards to incidents in which live animals were cut, skinned

or scalded.

 

Through the Freedom of Information Act, The Post obtained enforcement

documents from 28 plants that had high numbers of offenses or had drawn

penalties for violating humane-handling laws. The Post also interviewed

dozens of current and former federal meat inspectors and slaughterhouse

workers. A reporter reviewed affidavits and secret video recordings made

inside two plants.

 

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 than others in the industry. " Other plants are

not subject to such extensive scrutiny of their stunning activities, " the

plant complained in a 1997 letter to the USDA.

 

.. Government inspectors halted production for a day at the Calhoun Packing

Co. beef plant in Palestine, Tex., after inspectors saw cattle being

improperly stunned. " They were still conscious and had good reflexes, " B.V.

Swamy, a veterinarian and senior USDA official at the plant, wrote. The

shift supervisor " allowed the cattle to be hung anyway. " IBP, which owned

the plant at the time, contested the findings but " took steps to resolve the

situation, " including installing video equipment and increasing training, a

spokesman said. IBP has since sold the plant.

 

.. 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 USDA, the company

said it fired the stunner and increased monitoring of the slaughter process.

 

.. 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 USDA.

 

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

stunned to soften the hides 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 and plant workers attributed

many of the problems to poor training, faulty or poorly maintained equipment

or excessive production speeds. Those problems were identified five years

ago in an industry-wide audit by Temple Grandin, an assistant professor with

Colorado State University's animal sciences department and one of the

nation's leading experts on slaughter practices.

 

In the early 1990s, Grandin developed the first objective standards for

treatment of animals in slaughterhouses, which were adopted by the American

Meat Institute, the industry's largest trade group. Her initial, USDA-funded

survey in 1996 was one of the first attempts to grade slaughter plants.

 

One finding was a high failure rate among beef plants that use stunning

devices known as " captive-bolt " guns. Of the plants surveyed, only 36

percent earned a rating of " acceptable " or better, meaning cattle were

knocked unconscious with a single blow at least 95 percent of the time.

 

Grandin now conducts annual surveys as a consultant for the American Meat

Institute and McDonald's Corp. She maintains that the past four years have

brought dramatic improvements -- mostly because of pressure from McDonald's,

which sends a team of meat industry auditors into dozens of plants each year

to observe slaughter practices.

 

Based on the data collected by McDonald's auditors, the portion of beef

plants scoring " acceptable " or better climbed to 90 percent in 1999. Some

workers and inspectors are skeptical of the McDonald's numbers, and Grandin

said the industry's performance dropped slightly last year after auditors

stopped giving notice of some inspections.

 

Grandin said high production speeds can trigger problems when people and

equipment are pushed beyond their capacity. From a typical kill rate of 50

cattle an hour in the early 1900s, production speeds rose dramatically in

the 1980s. They now approach 400 per hour in the newest plants.

 

" It's like the 'I Love Lucy' episode in the chocolate factory, " she said.

" You can speed up a job and speed up a job, and after a while you get to a

point where performance doesn't simply decline -- it crashes. "

 

When that happens, it's not only animals that suffer. Industry trade

groups acknowledge that improperly stunned animals contribute to worker

injuries in an industry that already has the nation's highest rate of

job-related injuries and illnesses -- about 27 percent a year. At some

plants, " dead " animals have inflicted so many broken limbs and teeth that

workers wear chest pads and hockey masks.

 

" The live cows cause a lot of injuries, " said Martin Fuentes, an IBP

worker whose arm was kicked and shattered by a dying cow. " The line is never

stopped simply because an animal is alive. "

A 'Brutal' Harvest

At IBP's Pasco complex, the making of the American hamburger starts in a

noisy, blood-spattered chamber shielded from view by a stainless steel wall.

Here, live cattle emerge from a narrow chute to be dispatched in a process

known as " knocking " or " stunning. " On most days the chamber is manned by a

pair of Mexican immigrants who speak little English and earn about $9 an

hour for killing up to 2,050 head per shift.

 

The tool of choice is the captive-bolt gun, which fires a retractable

metal rod into the steer's forehead. An effective stunning requires a

precision shot, which workers must deliver hundreds of times daily to balky,

frightened animals that frequently weigh 1,000 pounds or more. Within 12

seconds of entering the chamber, the fallen steer is shackled to a moving

chain to be bled and butchered by other workers in a fast-moving production

line.

 

The hitch, IBP workers say, is that some " stunned " cattle wake up.

 

" If you put a knife into the cow, it's going to make a noise: It says,

'Moo!' " said Moreno, the former second-legger, who began working in the

stockyard last year. " They move the head and the eyes and the leg like the

cow wants to walk. "

 

After a blow to the head, an unconscious animal may kick or twitch by

reflex. But a videotape, made secretly by IBP workers and reviewed by

veterinarians for The Post, depicts cattle that clearly are alive and

conscious after being stunned.

 

Some cattle, dangling by a leg from the plant's overhead chain, twist and

arch their backs as though trying to right themselves. Close-ups show

blinking reflexes, an unmistakable sign of a conscious brain, according to

guidelines approved by the American Meat Institute.

 

The video, parts of which were aired by Seattle television station KING

last spring, shows injured cattle being trampled. In one graphic scene,

workers give a steer electric shocks by jamming a battery-powered prod into

its mouth.

 

More than 20 workers signed affidavits alleging that the violations shown

on tape are commonplace and that supervisors are aware of them. The sworn

statements and videos were prepared with help from the Humane Farming

Association. Some workers had taken part in a 1999 strike over what they

said were excessive plant production speeds.

 

" I've seen thousands and thousands of cows go through the slaughter

process alive, " IBP veteran Fuentes, the worker who was injured while

working on live cattle, said in an affidavit. " The cows can get seven

minutes down the line and still be alive. I've been in the side-puller where

they're still alive. All the hide is stripped out down the neck there. "

 

IBP, the nation's top beef processor, denounced as an " appalling

aberration " the problems captured on the tape. It suggested the events may

have been staged by " activists trying to raise money and promote their

agenda. . . .

 

" Like many other people, we were very upset over the hidden camera video, "

the company said. " We do not in any way condone some of the livestock

handling that was shown. "

 

After the video surfaced, IBP increased worker training and installed

cameras in the slaughter area. The company also questioned workers and

offered a reward for information leading to identification of those

responsible for the video. One worker said IBP pressured him to sign a

statement denying that he had seen live cattle on the line.

 

" I knew that what I wrote wasn't true, " said the worker, who did not want

to be identified for fear of losing his job. " Cows still go alive every day.

When cows go alive, it's because they don't give me time to kill them. "

 

Independent assessments of the workers' claims have been inconclusive.

Washington state officials launched a probe in May that included an

unannounced plant inspection. The investigators say they were detained

outside the facility for an hour while their identities were checked. They

saw no acts of animal cruelty once permitted inside.

 

Grandin, the Colorado State professor, also inspected IBP's plant, at the

company's request; that inspection was announced. Although she observed no

live cattle being butchered, she concluded that the plant's older-style

equipment was " overloaded. " Grandin reviewed parts of the workers' videotape

and said there was no mistaking what she saw.

 

" There were fully alive beef on that rail, " Grandin said.

Inconsistent Enforcement

Preventing this kind of suffering is officially a top priority for the

USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service. By law, a humane-slaughter violation

is among a handful of offenses that can result in an immediate halt in

production -- and cost a meatpacker hundreds or even thousands of dollars

per idle minute.

 

In reality, many inspectors describe humane slaughter as a blind spot:

Inspectors' regular duties rarely take them to the chambers where stunning

occurs. Inconsistencies in enforcement, training and record-keeping hamper

the agency's ability to identify problems.

 

The meat inspectors' union, in its petition last spring to Washington

state's attorney general, contended that federal agents are " often prevented

from carrying out " the mandate against animal cruelty. Among the obstacles

inspectors face are " dramatic increases in production speeds, lack of

support from supervisors in plants and district offices . . . new inspection

policies which significantly reduce our enforcement authority, and little to

no access to the areas of the plants where animals are killed, " stated the

petition by the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals.

 

Barbara Masters, the agency's director of slaughter operations, told meat

industry executives in February she didn't know if the number of violations

was up or down, though she believed most plants were complying with the law.

" We encourage the district offices to monitor trends, " she said. " The fact

that we haven't heard anything suggests there are no trends. "

 

But some inspectors see little evidence the agency is interested in

hearing about problems. Under the new inspection system, the USDA stopped

tracking the number of violations and dropped all mentions of humane

slaughter from its list of rotating tasks for inspectors.

 

The agency says it expects its watchdogs to enforce the law anyway. Many

inspectors still do, though some occasionally wonder if it's worth the

trouble.

 

" It always ends up in argument: Instead of re-stunning the animal, you

spend 20 minutes just talking about it, " said Colorado meat inspector Gary

Dahl, sharing his private views. " Yes, the animal will be dead in a few

minutes anyway. But why not let him die with dignity? "

 

 

 

 

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