O.T. Mad Cow

What did we find out from the Mad Cow scare?

We found out that most of our fast food burger restaurants will not use meat from downed cattle.

We found out that the meat from these downer cows is used for hamburger we buy in our supermarkets, and that includes the more expensive grinds of hamburger.

We found out that just because an animal is "suspected" of have a disease and tissue samples are sent to a lab for testing,, that meat is still introduced into the food chain, "before" the results of the test are back.. That was the biggest suprise of all of this learning experience. But,, they think this may be changing in the near future.. Kind of makes sense,doesn't it?

Now everyone knows that there are small slaughterhouses that "specialize" in culled dairy cattle, downed cows and all. We now know what they slaughter and where that meat goes. And, how the meat from one cow can contaminate tons of meat that is sent all over the western states even Hawaii and Guam.

Now when a choice steer or cow falls down in an overcrowed trailer and gets trampled for hours on it's way to slaughter, and can't get up, well, it won't be dragged into the kill floor for slaughter.

A few years ago in Washington State, a huge slaughterhouse got caught on tape skining cattle while still alive. One of those groups like PETA heard about this and got one of the employees to set up a secret video camera on the kill floor to document what was going on. Several employees had already quit because of the cruelty that was going on there. Once the tape was made, it made it's way to the nightly news, then the phones started to ring. This was during the big Ecoli scare and employees were complaining that managment was always speeding up the chains and they couldn't keep up and do a good job.. All the while this was happening under the watchful eye of the FSIS, Food Safety Inspection Service of the USDA..

So,, for anyone paying attention to the past week of events,, it has been a real education to say the least.

Dick

Thanks for your response. Maybe I didn't explain myself very well. In reference the story about the slaughterhouse dilema.
If my memory serves me correctly. There was a high percentage of employee turn over at this plant, somewhere over 50%. I guess they just couldn't take the grusome work day after day and some employees were disgusted with the way the operation was being ran. With managment pushing the kill floor crews to work faster, things were happening on the kill floor that, in anybodys book would not be correct, unless of course you were managment.
Apparently an employee contacted someone who they thought would care about the problems. The employees must have thought, what better group to contact but an animal rights group for something like this. Afer all, managment only wanted more production and complaining to them would be like talking to the wall. So apparently when the employees were asked to plant a camera on the kill floor and get some proof, the media was ready to listen, even if was from an animal rights group. The film footage showed it all and it was very evident that what the employees stated was true. As I remember no credit was given to the activist group who set the whole thing up, but with the video being shown on the nightly news, the public was outraged and rightly so. What this did, was bring to light that what was going on in that plant was not only cruel but didn't allow the workers to do a good job. We all know that when you have to work too fast, you can't do a good job. As I mentioned earlier, this happened during the big ECOLI scare. This was when feces from the animal was left on the meat and then infected the meat with ECOLI. This whole thing kind of showed that even under the FSIS watchful eye, production was more important than public health.
I'm not saying I agree with the stand of any animal rights group but when it comes to the health and safety of the consumer, this time they may have been right. And, none of us can say it's right to actually rip the hide off of an animal while it's still alive, even those who work on a kill floor everyday.

Dick

As for skinning cows alive I have some serious doubts about that, an animal kicking and twisting is extremely dangerous, let alone while you're attempting to skin it. Even if you accomplished it would be so much slower then skinning a properly "knocked" cow the second or two you gained would be lost in the extra time it to skin it.

Most of the problems you described sounds like stuff that happens as little plants with 20 or 30 employees. The big guys just don't screw with downer cows. At IBP there is no way a partially paralized cow would have made it into the holding pens, let alone into the plant. Cows with obvious problems (limps, lumps and even a bad eye) just don't make in, I always thought these ended up in dog food. A farmer selling such an animal usually is lucky to get 1/10 the price of a healthy animal. Even the little mom and pop processing plants won't mess with these (although I am surprised they will do deer). The mid range speciality plants must be getting away with murder to have these practises. Their "natural" products get you sick the old fasion way.

As for 50% turnover, I know IBP managed about 150% turnover every year, its hard, back breaking labor for low pay. When I was hired in 1986 I started with 30 people, three months later only 5 remained, a year later I was the only one. That was the average hiring every week in a plant of about a thousand employees.

The problem I have with this whole Mad Cow thing is every one I have seen on TV has been a dairy cow. Hmmmmm mmm...

But here's a question- if they test downers for BSE, which they did in this case, what good does it do if they process and disperse the meat to the four winds before the test results come back? Isn't there an old saying about shutting barn doors that would be especially appropriate here?

!! BOB!!