English Content:
Agriculture officials today ordered the recall of an unprecedented 143 million pounds of ground meat from illegally slaughtered downed dairy cows at a Chino, California slaughter plant.
The government took action after The Humane Society of the United States provided videotaped evidence and a detailed report of their undercover investigation of animal cruelty at the plant to state and federal officials.
Animals unable to stand on their own, called downer cows, that had passed a veterinary inspection but were not walking before slaughter, were processed at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company in an inhumane manner, the videotape shows. Injured animals were beaten and prodded, and a fork lift was used to shove living downer cows onto the killing floor, contrary to California law.
The danger is mad cow disease, or BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Inability to walk is a sign of an advanced stage of mad cow disease, so U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations forbid the processing of downer cows into the human food chain.
Dr. Richard Raymond, USDA under secretary for food safety said at a hastily called news conference today, "There is a remote probability that the recalled beef products could cause adverse health effects if consumed."
Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said he is "dismayed at the in-humane handling of cattle that has resulted in the violation of food safety regulations at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company."
Schafer, who has been agriculture secretary for just 21 days, said, "It is extremely unlikely that these animals were at risk for BSE because of the multiple safeguards; however, this action is necessary because plant procedures violated USDA regulations."
BSE is a fatal, neurodegenerative disease that causes a spongy degeneration in the brain and spinal cord of infected animals. It is believed to be caused by infective prions, misshapen proteins, rather than virus or bacteria. Prions are spread by feeding ruminant animals like cows material containing contamined animal tissue.
A ban on animal protein in ruminant food was passed in the United States in 1997 as part of the safeguard system, and Scafer said.
In humans, the fatal illness is known as new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It is spread by consuming infected animals and by blood transfusions. By June 2007, it had killed 165 people in Britain, and six elsewhere, with the number expected to rise because of the disease's long incubation period.
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