Beef recall 15 years in the making?

As the nation’s schools and restaurants revise their menus in the wake of this weekend’s recall of 143 million pounds of beef, the largest recall in history, many critical eyes are turning toward the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA has said the recall was only a precaution, but it raises issues about the safety of the nation’s food supply and whether the alleged slaughterhouse animal abuse is an isolated problem.

The USDA is under fire from lawmakers who are rightly incensed that the agency has been lax in monitoring procedures at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., based in Chino, Calif.

According to the Associated Press, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, chairwoman of the House Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration Appropriations Subcommittee, said after watching the inhumane scenes on a videotape recorded by the Humane Society, that she was concerned the tape “demonstrates just how far our food safety system has collapsed.”

Consumer group Food and Water Watch has alleged that the USDA has allowed anywhere from 7 percent to 21 percent of inspector positions go vacant in recent years, depending on the district — a charge which USDA spokesman Keith Williams denied.

Although officials so far have said the health risk from the meat in question is small, DeLauro, D-Conn., has asked USDA Undersecretary Dick Raymond for an accounting of how many schools may have received the recalled beef for their lunch programs, as well as affected commercial customers.

The video that led to the recall showed sick cows being moved with forklifts and poked with electric prods, rather than being separated from the healthy cows and tended to by a veterinarian, as required by federal laws. USDA officials have been attempting to soft-pedal this entire event, but a sharp-eyed reader of this blog found a video on YouTube that indicates this may not be a new problem.

The poster of the video on uTube claims the following undercover footage was taken at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., formerly called Dairyland.

However, the newscast from 1993 does not actually identify the slaughterhouse by name or even indicate clearly if all the undercover footage was shot at the same place, though the reporter refers to a Chino, Calif., meat plant.

It’s also important to note that the broadcast does not actually come right out and say that abuses were taking place at the plant in the video. However, it certainly raises a question about how effective the USDA has been in preventing animal abuse in the beef industry. Warning, some of the images may be disturbing.