The Westland/Hallmark Beef Recall: A Carnivore’s Thoughts

March 6th, 2008 by Scott

For several days the week of February 19th, the images were seemingly unavoidable: sick cattle on the slaughterhouse floor so weak they could hardly stand – and in some cases collapsed on the ground, bellowing uselessly for help as workers prodded them with forklifts in a last ditch effort to ensure that the animals might be upright long enough to be slaughtered.

It was a harrowing thing to see. I felt sick, and sad, and then outraged. I wondered how this could happen, why the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) somehow totally missed this heartbreaking cruelty, why it had to take an infiltration of the processing plant by the Humane Society to bring this behavior to light with their hidden cameras. No doubt vegetarians would use this incident, which resulted in a recall of 143 million pounds of beef, as another way to rally for their cause, another way to scare or shame omnivores into shunning meat. That’s to be expected. But among the defiantly carnivorous among us, what are we supposed to do with these images, and with all this information about possibly tainted meat, much of which wound up going to – get this – school cafeterias to be consumed by children. What possible reaction can we have to this episode that wouldn’t seem either hypocritical or glaringly insensitive?

Read on to hear what The Shameless Carnivore suggests…

First, indignation is certainly in order. Yet again, we, as American consumers, have been failed by our government; this is no surprise to me, having grown up in a New Orleans home that drowned under fifteen feet of flood water that should have been contained by a levee system constructed by the U.S. Army’s Corps of Engineers. But unlike in the case of Katrina – in which there’s no real way to hold the government accountable (they made sure of that, boy howdy) – the voices of moral outrage may very well be the instrument of real change when it comes to the safety of our meat. It wouldn’t be the first time, either: it was precisely because of a massive public outcry about the quality of meat in this country, following Upton Sinclair’s abattoir exposé The Jungle, that prompted Theodore Roosevelt to pass the Food and Drug Act and the Federal Meat Inspection Act in 1906 (later, in 1967, the Wholesome Food Act was passed to ensure further consumer protection). Indeed, it’s time for another change. In this case, there’s a crack in the inspection system that needs to be shored up, and quick: the onus is on the processing facility to notify a USDA veterinarian if an animal ceases to be ambulatory (ie. a “downer cow,” a term just rife with double entendre) between its initial inspection and slaughter, often as little time as 24 hours. The management on the floor at Westland/Hallmark simply refused to comply, and wound up processing animals that normally would have been taken out of line for fear of contamination from e.coli bacteria, BSE, or other diseases.

This, of course, is reprehensible behavior, and it should be the duty of all Americans – especially carnivorous Americans – to hold the government’s foot to the fire until we can be assured that our food is safe. And companies that so callously disregard established safety and handling measures should face swift and serious consequences, a punishment severe enough to serve also as a potent deterrent. Personally, my blood boils not just because of the inhumane treatment of beef cattle, and not just because possibly infirmed animals wound up in children’s school lunches (among other places), and not just because the government’s own system of inspection failed. No, my moral outrage and sadness is most exacerbated by the recall itself, that because of gross mismanagement and abuse by Westland/Hallmark management, millions of animals lost their lives for nothing, since most of the recalled meat will simply be destroyed. Millions of animals, dead, and not a burger to show for it. Shameful.

Such is the burden of being a carnivore in a modern, industrialized world. In the history of the United States, meat has never been as inexpensive or as plentiful as it is today, but it comes at a certain cost. No matter how good our food inspection process is, due to the sheer volume of product it seems inevitable that occasionally things will fall through the cracks. To that end, concerned meat eaters should take it upon themselves to be responsible for what and how we consume. If you still love and enjoy meat but are plagued by fears and moral doubts arising from the most recent recall but aren’t quite ready to jump to the vegetarian side of the fence, know that there are still a number of ways to remain both carnivorous and morally intact. If it’s animal cruelty and inhumane handling or processing that has you up at nights, you can simply buy Certified Humane meat (go to their website for a listing of stores in your area that carry humanely raised and raised and handled products). If you’re worried about food safety, take it upon yourself to find out where your meat comes from, and choose a source that stands by the quality of its ingredients and the health of their animals. Resources like Heritage Foods USA provide concerned and hungry omnivores dozens of options for healthy, high quality, conscientiously raised meat. You can even check out their Heritage turkeys via webcam, if you like, to see that they’re vibrant and robust, far from the squalid factory birds so many people are anxious about eating. Or better yet, go the source yourself and spend some time hunting your meat in the wild. You can be pretty certain that deer or wild boar or ducks in the forest won’t be contaminated by industrial by-products, not to mention antibiotics or growth hormones.

Ultimately, if there is any silver lining to the despicable events of the past week, it is that they serve as a wake-up call, a reminder to those of us who are respectful and earnest meat eaters. As with many other areas of life in which we must call forth moral fortitude and vigilance towards being a responsible consumer, perhaps none is more sacred then the food we put in our mouths. Now more than ever, it seems as though we’re using the myriad tools at our disposal to take more responsibility to purchase and consume quality, humanely raised meat products into our own hands, and to hold the government accountable for its failures to keep possibly tainted animals out of our food chain (and especially our public schools).

As it should be.

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