Farm & Food File | A syndicated column by Alan Guebert Early February was not a good time to be an American carnivore. First, on Saturday, Feb. 8, Rancho Feeding Co. of Petaluma, CA, announced it was recalling 8.7 million pounds of beef carcasses and cuts. That’s virtually every pound of the company’s 2013 throughput. The reason for the recall, explained the Feb. 11 Los Angeles Times, was that federal regulators “said (the) plant ‘processed diseased and unsound Read More …
In early 2008 the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) released a video showing workers at a California slaughterhouse using electric prods on cattle unable to stand on their own (called downers) and ramming them with forklifts to make them stand for inspection. (Federal law requires that animals be able to walk into the slaughterhouse, and downed cattle are banned from human consumption because inability to stand may be a symptom what is commonly called mad cow Read More …