“Meat Out”

Late note: I started this post several weeks ago when the news broke, but forgot to finish it! So I’m finishing the thoughts and putting it up in honor of Meat Out day.

The HSUS investigation into abuses of cattle and protocol at the Westland/Hallmark slaughterhouse has now led to the largest beef recall in the United States — 143 million pounds.

Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said his department has evidence that Westland did not routinely contact its veterinarian when cattle became non-ambulatory after passing inspection, violating health regulations.

“Because the cattle did not receive complete and proper inspection, Food Safety and Inspection Service has determined them to be unfit for human food and the company is conducting a recall,” Schafer said in a statement.

They say 37 million pounds went to the National School Lunch Program, and that most of the meat has probably been eaten. (So what’s the point of the recall?) And here’s the thing: this is just one processing facility, and it happened to get caught - thanks to an undercover investigator. Just how widespread and longstanding might these practices be? Notes Anna Lappe’:

This incident — including the abuse and questionable food safety of the meat from this slaughterhouse — is not just a case of a few bad apples. It’s the inevitable outcome of a system in which animal abuse and health concerns are predictable by-products of following the prime directive — maximizing profit — in a context of inadequate oversight.

The brutality captured in the video may be particularly extreme, but the nature of slaughterhouse’s ramped-up production inexorably leads to such animal suffering. With pressure to keep lines moving fast, for example, workers often fail to completely stun animals, so that cows can be conscious during slaughter. And those production levels? They’re soaring. Tyson, the largest processor in the country, slaughters 222,000 head of cattle a week, the equivalent of 1,321 an hour, seven days a week.

This high-octane production threatens eaters’ health, too. Under such conditions, meat can become tainted with fecal matter, increasing the likelihood of contamination with the potentially deadly E. coli O157:H7 bacteria. Since April 2007, concerns about E. coli instigated recalls of at least 30 million pounds of beef — enough to have provided a burger to every man, woman, and child in the nation. With this week’s recall, add another four for each of us.

Meat guzzling

Coincidental to my dairy musings yesterday is today’s NYT feature on the impending “sea change” in the economics of meat consumption. It’s a very good piece; I hope you’ll look at the whole thing, but here’s a “meaty” excerpt:

The world’s total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period. (In the developing world, it rose twice as fast, doubling in the last 20 years.) World meat consumption is expected to double again by 2050, which one expert, Henning Steinfeld of the United Nations, says is resulting in a “relentless growth in livestock production.”

Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total.