WaPo:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has ordered the largest meat recall in its history -- 143 million pounds of beef, a California meatpacker's entire production for the past two years -- because the company did not prevent sick animals from entering the U.S. food supply, officials said yesterday.
Despite the breadth of the sanction, USDA officials underscored their belief that the meat, distributed by Westland Meat Co., poses little or no hazard to consumers, and that most of it was eaten long ago.
The recall comes less than three weeks after the release of a videotape showing what the USDA later called "egregious violations" of federal animal care regulations by employees of a Westland partner, Hallmark Meat Packing in Chino.
Hallmark did not consistently bring in federal veterinarians to examine cattle headed for slaughter that were too sick or weak to stand on their own, Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said. "Because the cattle did not receive complete and proper inspection, [the USDA] has determined them to be unfit for human food, and the company is conducting a recall," he said in a statement.
About 37 million pounds of the meat -- cuts, ground beef and prepared products such as meatballs and burrito filling -- went to school lunch and other public nutrition programs, and "almost all of this product is likely to have been consumed," said Ron Vogel, a USDA administrator.
It's enough to make me turn vegetarian.
Except I would like to see the Hallmark executives turning on a spit over a slow fire.
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What really torques me about this...
Well, one of the things that torque me, is the incredible waste of it all. Just a huge waste, for nothing, because some corporate bozo doesn't wanna follow the rules.
So hundreds of thousands of cattle met their ends in horrific circumstances, for meat, for us. And we are going to recall it and throw it away (well not entirely, I guess, recalled meat actually can get processed into things like sausages and so on, cooked things).
All the fertilizer and work to grow the food that fed those cattle. All the water that watered them, the diesel used to move their manure around, the fields covered with it, the gas used to move them to market, and the cattle themselves, their precious lives just utterly, completely, wasted.
It's absolutely sickening.
You'd think from this comment that I'm a vegetarian, but I'm not. The next step in my family's self-sufficiency plan is to raise our own beef. Should be starting this year. And lemme tell you, that beef cow is going to be fed right, treated right, and slaughtered humanely and with honor.
spongiform encephalitis
...takes years to manifest and also has an environmental and stress component in humans.
Just sayin'.
Brain is worse than muscle. Venison is worse than beef, incidently, since deer can even spread it by their saliva. And cooking doesn't kill it either.
Eat vegetables first, then non mammals, and human brains dead last, unless of course you're already a main$tream zombie.
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky