Especially because Rafael Sanchez Herrera, 34, of Chino, one of two Hallmark workers charged in the abuse, says workers were taught the videotaped techniques to get downed cows to stand up and pass inspection by their supervisors.
Even the press sees problems with the "previously healthy downer" loophole.
"You're saying that those [downers] never would have passed inspection anyway," Miriam Falco of CNN Medical News said to Ken Peterson, assistant administrator of USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, at a press briefing. "But we see video of them going into the facility. So at what point does your inspection pick up on this?"
Of course there's more denial in the USDA than the cause of downers.
Try to explain why the meat won't be retested, why no one has gotten sick yet or even disposal methods without mentioning mad cow.
Unlike E.coli, mad cow prions can't be detected in meat--only in brains of infected animals--killed by bleach, formaldehyde, radiation, heat, alcohol or burial, and they take years to make someone sick.
Still, as the nation has serious doubts about meat safety, it's clear to Secretary Schafer, the American Meat Institute Foundation and the New York Farm Bureau who is to blame for the scandal: The Humane Society for not calling the attention of USDA inspectors to the job they weren't doing.
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