Hallmark/Westland beef recall: shutting the barn door just a little too late

“We’re dead meat.” 

That’s what Anthony Magidow, general manager at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. said last week after his company recalled some 143 million pounds of beef produced by the Chino, California meatpacker since February 2006.  It is the largest beef recall in US history.

An interesting choice of words on Mr. Magidow’s part.  Hallmark/Westland is the subject of a USDA investigation regarding animal-welfare and food-safety violations after an undercover video taken by The Humane Society was released showing Hallmark employees zapping downer cows — those that are too sick or injured to stand up or walk on their own — with electric prods, shooting water up their noses with high-pressure hoses, and ramming them with forklifts in order to get them up and walking.

Since downer cows can be a source of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad-cow disease), e. coli, or salmonella bacteria, non-ambulatory cattle have been banned from the human food chain since 2003.  Mad cow can cause a rare but fatal brain disease in humans, and e. coli and salmonella can lead to food poisoning in humans. Under federal regulations, meat companies are supposed to report downer cows to a federal inspctor for re-evaluation.

The Hallmark/Westland plant has been closed since February 1 due to the recall and is reportedly running low on cash.  Magidow’s dead meat statement was in reference to what will mostly likely put his company out of business — the fact that the USDA will probably require the company to pay the incurred costs of destroying and replacing the meat supplied by Hallmark to the National School Lunch Program, the Emergency Food Assistance Program, and the Food Assistance Program on Indian Reservations.  Hallmark, which has laid off some 200 employees as a result of the recall, is one of the largest suppliers of the school lunch program, accounting for some 20% of the its ground meat products.

It must be said that none of the meat sold by Hallmark/Westland has been found to be contaminated, nor have any illnesses been reported. The USDA has stated that the meat, some 93 million pounds of which is still unaccounted for, poses very little risk of harm.

But clearly, Hallmark, which has been on the radar of to the Inland Humane Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals since 1996, has violated the regulations.  Hallmark/Westland employees, two of whom have been charged by the San Bernardino County district attorney with felony counts of animal abuse, have said that they were told to, and on rare occasions did, slaughter downer cows.

Congress, always a prime shutter of the barn door after the horse is out, is holding hearings. Official letters are flying. In addition, the Government Accountability Office (or GAO), which is the investigative body of Congress, is planning to look at food safety within the federal school-lunch program.

The Humane Society has called for real-time cameras in slaughtering plants as a way to get companies to comply with the law.  So has Dr. Temple Grandin, an expert in animal-handling and a professor of animal agriculture at Colorado State University, who says that until the meat industry is more open with the public about its operations, the only view the public will have is that of its adversaries. 

There are two companies already using operational surveillance: Arrowsight Food and Beverage in New York, and FPL Foods in Georgia.  Adam Aronson, Arrowsight’s CEO, says that since just anyone can film anything inside a meat plant, companies must think about any operations that, if exposed, might hurt their brand, their product, or people.

The meat industry, their watchdogs, the public, and the government are all in an uproar over this, as well they should be.  There is a deafening silence, however. Since the recall, Hallmark/Westland’s president and owner, Steve Mendell, has refused to comment to the press and failed to show before Congress to testify.