Comment from JEAN PUBLIC

USDA FSIS is responsible for ensuring compliance with the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. The agency employs veterinarians and inspectors to monitor activities at federally inspected plants; however, investigations and statements from federal whistleblowers have revealed widespread violations. Gail Eisnitz documents many examples in her book Slaughterhouse:28 It was a plant where squealing hogs were left straddling the restrainer and dangling live by one leg when workers left the stick pit for their half-hour lunch breaks; where stunners were shocking hogs three and four times; where inadequately stunned hogs were jumping from the shackling table into the blood pit below, smashing into metal pipes on the trip down and fracturing legs and backs; where, whether broken or not, thousands of squealing hogs were immersed in the plant’s scalding tank alive. In January 2008, HSUS released video footage from a six-week undercover investigation at Hallmark Meat Packing Co. – a federally inspected California slaughterhouse that had been a major supplier of ground beef to the National School Lunch Program and was honored as a USDA “supplier of the year” for the 2004–2005 school year. The Des Moines Register (“Inspectors Didn’t Catch Cattle Abuse in California,” March 23, 2008) pointed out: The undercover videos were bad enough: packing-plant workers abusing sick or disabled cattle and dragging at least one of the cows to be slaughtered, a violation of federal food-safety standards. But consumer advocates say what’s also disturbing is what happened within days of that video being shot at a California slaughterhouse. Independent inspectors from two auditing firms visited the Westland/ Hallmark Meat Co. plant and gave it glowing marks. The Los Angeles Times (“Cattle Inspections Thwarted,” February 20, 2008) reported: Slaughterhouse workers watch every move of federal inspectors. They know when they take bathroom breaks. They use the radio to alert one anothe