More from _Slaughterhouse_ by Gail Eisnitz


Working with a Washington, DC law firm which represents government
whistleblowers, I found that due to increased line speeds and pressure from
USDA supervisors not to interfere with industry profits, inspectors were
virtually powerless even to enforce meat safety regulations.

I examined poultry slaughter practices. Did you know that we are currently
slaughtering as many chickens in one day as we did in the entire year of
1930? Anyway, I learned about expedient slaughter technologies that, while
allowing a single plant to kill as many a half million birds a day, were
resulting in increased contamination rates. Today, our poultry is so filthy
that plants have to decontaminate it with chlorine--in this use chlorine is
potentially carcinogenic--at the end of the production process. The entire
European Union won't even import US poultry because they say they can't
count on decontamination to produce a safe product when the product doesn't
have to be contaminated in the first place.

Next I looked at expedient beef inspection programs that USDA officials--
generally corporate agribusiness leaders from the private sector who had
been temporarily appointed to head up the meat inspection program--had put
in place over the years to allow for increases in line speeds. These
programs has produced dangerously contaminated beef.

I interviewed parents who had taken their kids out for hamburgers to
celebrate good report cards and such and then watched as their children's
bodies were slowly dismantled organ by organ until, after days or weeks,
they finally died from E.coli 0157 poisoning. After looking at the CDC
statistics, it became apparent that deaths from foodborne illness had
quadrupled in the last 15 years, as consolidation and line speeds had
increased.

If, thanks to pressure from corporate agribusiness, meat inspectors
couldn't even protect the public from deadly meat, which they perceived as
their primary responsibility, then surely they couldn't stop the line for
animal suffering. When I met with the chairman of the 6,000 member meat
inspectors' union, he told me that due to industry consolidation, increased
line speeds, and inspection policies developed in collusion with the meat
industry, USDA meat inspectors are totally powerless to enforce humane
regulations.

During our conversations, and in subsequent discussions with scores of
other meat inspectors, it became apparent that, while inspectors are the
individuals charged by Congress with enforcing humane regulations, they are
not even stationed in the areas of the plants where animals are being
handled or killed. No one is stationed in these areas of the plants. What's
more, while the regulations required inspectors to stop the line when they
observed violations, no where did the regulations require the inspectors to
visit the areas of the plants where they could observe violations! Thus,
the inspectors told me, if they stopped the production line for Humane
Slaughter Act violations, they would probably be disciplined for abandoning
their inspection stations and for impeding production.

***

"I've seen cattle dragged and choked, knocked four, five, ten times. I've
found them alive clear over to the rump stand. Takes them about ten minutes
to get to the rump stand. That's after they've been completely legged [had
their legs removed] and run through an electrical shock system too [to
facilitate bleeding]. They're up there sucking in air and bellowing. Their
eyes bugging out."

***

"One day when I went out to the suspect pen, two employees were using metal
pipes to club some hogs to death. There had to be twenty little hogs out
there that they were going to give to the rendering company. And these two
guys were out there beating them to death with clubs and having a good old
time.

"I went to the USDA vet, my supervisor, to complain. He said, 'They're of
no value because they're going to be tanked [rendered] anyway.' So,
according to my supervisor, it was all right to club those little hogs to
death. They were beating them like they do those little seals in Alaska."

***

"Dragging cattle with a chain and a forklift is standard practice at the
plant. And that's even after the forklift operator rolled over and crushed
the head of one downer while dragging another."

***

"I've seen them put twenty to twenty-five holes in a hog's head trying to
knock her and she was still on her feet. Her head looked like Swiss cheese.
Tough gal. Sometimes they'll use a twenty-two and shoot the hog through its
eye. Or you might have to hit both eyes on the same hog."

***

"Sometimes cattle fall through the bottom of the restrainer and they're
still alive. And the workers have to get them up anyway they can. So they
wrap a chain around it, lift it up, bust something. If it's a leg, they'll
break the leg. If it's the head, they'll break the neck. It usually breaks,
whatever they hook on to. You can hear the bones cracking a lot of times."

***

"An employee recently told me about a cow who got her leg stuck when the
floor of a truck collapsed. 'How'd you get her out alive?' I asked the guy.
'Oh,' he said, 'we just went underneath the truck and cut her leg off.' If
somebody tells you this, you know there's a lot of things nobody's telling
you."

***

"A steer was running up the alley way and got his leg between the boards
and he couldn't get it out. They didn't want to lose any time killing
cattle and he was blocking their path, so they just used a blowtorch to
burn his leg off while he was alive."

***

And if that's not bad enough, the USDA, at corporate agribusiness's behest,
has come up with ways to further deregulate the meat industry, to remove
inspectors from slaughterhouses. The fewer the number of inspectors to try
to stop the lines for contaminants, the faster the production lines can go.
In its latest inspection program, called Hazard Analysis Critical Control
Points, the USDA is actually attempting to remove the vast majority of
inspectors from plants. Not only does that compromise the safety of the
meat and poultry coming out of those plants, but it leaves us wondering
exactly who will be charged with enforcing the Humane Slaughter Act if
there aren't inspectors in the plants!

And it's not just USDA. As so many of you know, last year, US farmers and
ranchers who were required to contribute millions in check-off dollars to
beef, pork, and dairy trade associations--a total of a quarter of a billion
dollars for programs they didn't necessarily support. Thanks to the
incredible efforts of the Campaign for Family Farms, the Land Stewardship
Project, and the Livestock Marketing Association, we are hopeful that we
may finally see an end to these outrageous payments. Up until now, however,
despite the fact that these greedy commodity groups have had an annual
income of a quarter of a billion dollars to fritter away, little to nothing
has gone to ensure the humane slaughter of 142 million farm animals a year-
-the very source of their profits. The farmers and ranchers who have read
my book find this outrageous.

And those 142 milllion animals are the ones covered by the Humane Slaughter
Act. Then there are another 8.2 billion chickens that are exempt from that
law's coverage who are subject to incredible suffering at slaughter. To
immobilize birds for neck-cutting, US poultry processors, on an average,
use only about one-tenth the electrical current that would adequately stun
the birds. The result is that untold numbers of birds are going into the
scalding tank alive.

I also found during my investigation that it wasn't just the animals and
consumers who are victims of multinational corporate greed, but the workers
are victims as well. Many of these operations have 100 percent and higher
turnover rates per year. It's the most dangerous industry in the country.
Workers are chewed up and spit out. During the course of the investigation,
I documented people who had lost fingers, limbs, had breasts caught in
machines, people who had been burned and stabbed, people who had been
crushed by falling animals, people who had been killed or who dropped dead
on the line. But the real danger to the workers lies in repetitive motion
illnesses. Due to exorbitant line speeds, in the last 15 years, we've seen
a 1000 percent increase in cumulative trauma disorders. Even the meat
industry itself reports that at current line speeds, workers' bodies are
physically used up after 5 years. In fact, that's why these companies
intentionally recruit illegal workers from places like Mexico--that
completely and conveniently protects them from insurance claims.

And then there are the independent farmers whose lives are destroyed by
multinational corporate packers. Advance contracts with corporate hog
producers, vertical intergration, and what appeared to be the carefully-
timed shut down of an IBP Iowa plant in the middle of last year's hog price
crisis and the resulting massive bottleneck at the nation's hog plants,
drove hog prices down to disastrous levels. While production exceeded 100
percent of slaughter capacity and farmers were receiving $8 to $10 per
hundredweight of animal and were unable to pay their feed bills; while this
catastrophe may ultimately spell the loss of as many as 50,000 independent
hog farms; IBP, Smithfield, and Seaboard were enjoying record profits. IBP
declared fourth quarter earnings to be four times higher in 1998 than in
1997. Smithfield Foods reported fiscal 1999 net earnings for its year ended
May 2 up 77 percent from the previous year.

A few months ago, I had the incredibly unique opportunity to confront
Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman on national TV. One morning, in a
motel room, when I rolled out of bed and flipped on the TV, I happened to
stumble across Glickman speaking on C-Span. Well, you can imagine, I dialed
and dialed until I finally got through. The fact that I was sitting on my
bed in my underwear talking to the Sec. of Agriculture only added to the
thrill.

Anyway, I explained who I was and I clearly elucidated what the findings of
my book were. He said he'd read my book, and that many people at USDA were
reading it. He expressed concern about the problem, but then said the
USDA's primary function is meat inspection. And then he went into a
cheerleading routine, telling me and America about the terrific job USDA
inspectors do when it comes to inspecting our meat. I guess that's why
we've seen a 25 million pound recall of ground beef and a 35 million pound
recall of hot dogs in the last few years. Oh, and incidentally, he said,
the USDA does not have the money to enforce the Humane Slaughter Act.

Over the course of my investigation, I faced many roadblocks: informants
were gagged and fired; one was actually stabbed to death; an uncooperative
boss impeded my efforts to the point where I was forced to change
employers; TV producers repeatedly got my hopes up that they would expose
the findings and then dropped the story because it was deemed too graphic
for public consumption; I became so physically depleted and discouraged
about ever exposing this information that I was struck with a life
threatening illness. But now, it's done. And it's all right here in black
and white.

This book is an incredibly powerful weapon in the war against greedy,
corporate agribusiness interests. This is the first time that slaughter
workers and federal meat inspectors--individuals who represent 2,000,000
hours of service on the kill floor--as well as factory farm workers, have
ever gone public in their own words, telling America about what is going on
behind the guard shacks of America's slaughterhouses, and the locked doors
of America's factory farms.

For 41 years, Americans have assumed that the Humane Slaughter Act was
being enforced. The public has a right to know that the USDA has violated
its trust. The public needs to know that thousands of helpless animals are
being brutalized in America's packing plants. That packers can brutalize
animals with impunity.

If you don't want to buy the book, go to your library. If they don't have
it, get them to order it. TV is not going to tell Americans about these
atrocities. Contact local radio stations, write letters to the editor,
convince anybody and everybody you can to read this book. Do whatever you
can to get this information out there. Help me to spread the word! I am so
grateful to know that there are so many people at this conference who care
and who can help us in the grassroots effort that's necessary to change the
nation's consciousness.

Matthew L. Martin wrote:


Obvious forgery snipped.

Another forgery complaint filed.

Matthew