Down but Not Out at Hallmark/Westland Meat Company
The one-sided focus on HACCP has a profound effect on the USDA's traditional role in animal-disease protection. According to testimony given in April 2008 to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform by Stanley Painter, the Chairman of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Local Union of the American Federation of Government Employees, the scandal at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Company in Chino, California, "highlights one of the problems that we have attempted to raise with the agency ever since 1996 when Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) inspection system was put in place. There seems to be too much reliance on an honor system for the industry to police itself. While the USDA investigation is still going on at Hallmark/Westland, a couple of facts have emerged that point to a system that can be gamed by those who want to break the law."[17]
Painter says that "the bottom line is that if plant management creates a culture for their employees to skirt around FSIS regulations, they can usually find a way to do it because inspection personnel are usually outnumbered."[18]
Without enough inspectors, public safety is dependent on company personnel to alert the veterinarian if an animal is "down" and removed from the slaughtering process, a requirement necessary to ensure downed cattle, a source of mad cow disease, are neither abused nor used for slaughter and get into the food supply. Video shot by an investigator for the Human Society of the United States proves the honor system isn't a viable substitute for the presence of government inspectors. Showing acts of extreme cruelty, the video also documents the plant's workers were guilty of violating the Humane Slaughter Act.
For the Love of Money
According to Gail Eisnitz of the Humane Farming Association and author of the disturbing book Slaughterhouse, "The privatization of meat inspection has meant a quiet death to the already meager enforcement of the Humane Slaughter Act. 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. [19]
Though the USDA denies this, Eisnitz points out that "They've gotten rid of the task codes that would direct the inspectors to actually monitor the slaughtering areas, and the handling as well, so basically, nobody's watching what's happening inside these operations. The USDA meat inspectors are completely powerless when it comes to enforcing their own regulations. They're virtually prohibited from doing so. [20]
The speed of the slaughter and disassembly line directly impacts the company's bottom line. And companies don't really want any limitation on how fast they can go. The implementation of HACCP has effectively eliminated the natural restriction on the line speed that was dependent on inspectors' physical ability to witness and control events at all line stations. Maximizing profits is a lot easier this way. In Europe, however, line speeds are slower in order to allow proper inspection to occur.
With Increased Speed Comes Increased Risk
The increase in line speed and company pressure on workers to maintain a certain pace also directly increases the likelihood of inhumane treatment of animals. The inhumane treatment of animals, in turn, directly increases the chances that 1) animals will not be successfully stunned and rendered insensible prior to being shackled, hung and bled out, which means they will be conscious and suffering while being cut to pieces along the disassembly line; 2) workers will sustain injuries from trying to perform their duties on struggling animals; and 3) feces will contaminate meat.
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