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Inspection Problems at Hallmark/Westland

By Pritzker | Ruohonen

The aftermath of the largest beef recall in United States history, 143 million pounds produced by the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co., leaves a myriad of questions open to answer about how the USDA could have overlooked such blatant violations of humane treatment of animals. A story in the L.A. Times explores the relationship of slaughterhouse workers with government inspectors and how it puts the nation’s food supply in jeopardy.

According to the story,

Slaughterhouse workers watch every move of federal inspectors. They know when they take bathroom breaks. They use the radio to alert one another to the inspector's every step. They even assign the pretty talkative woman to work next to the inspector to distract him from his mission to safeguard the nation's food supply.

The workers’ attempts to avoid the regulatory eyes of USDA inspectors seem to work.  Not only did it lead to the violations at Westland, but a 2006 audit of 12 slaughterhouses showed that 29 downer animals made their way to slaughter, only 9 of which had documented physical injuries that showed they were not diseased.

As the Government Accountability Office begins to investigate USDA inspection procedures, data is already available detailing the amount of vacant inspection posts in slaughterhouses across the country.

Last year, 9% of inspector positions nationwide were vacant, according to Amanda Eamich, a spokeswoman for the USDA's inspection service. In the district that includes Hallmark/Westland Meat, the average vacancy rate was 12%, said Stan Painter, president of the inspector's union. Eamich said that the vacancy rate is low compared with previous years and that the agency is recruiting aggressively to fill the vacancies.

Not only are there vacancies on the inspection lines, but the inspectors who are assigned to watch over a given section of a slaughterhouse are often called over to help inspect cattle carcasses. The abandoned posts at the cattle pens and elsewhere make all the more easy for workers to inhumanely treat animals out of view from inspectors.

The Westland products were used in the National School Lunch Program, and the GAO is currently figuring out which schools received the meat so that the remaining meat can be destroyed.

The meat industry stands by their members saying that this incident is not indicative of the industry as a whole.  Whether that is true or not, it is clear that there are problems existent in the way the USDA inspects slaughterhouses, and measures will need to be taken to improve the process so that future situations like Hallmark/Westland can be avoided in the future.

Full post as published by Food Poisoning Law Blog on February 21, 2008 (boomark / email).