DOJ settles suit with beef suppliers who sold beef from mistreated cows for school lunches

 

[caption id="attachment_21086" align="alignleft" width="300"] National School Lunch program[/caption]

Leanne Jenkins---“The contractors who supply beef and other meat products to schools and child-care facilities have a responsibility to provide our nation’s young people with products that come only from healthy and humanely handled animals,” said André Birotte Jr., the United States Attorney in Los Angeles following a settlement that involved selling beef products from slaughterhouses found guilty of mistreating animals. 

“This settlement holds accountable businesses that mistreated cows on a regular basis and routinely evaded a critically important USDA inspection procedure that allowed ‘downer cows’ to be processed into food.”Birotte went on to say.

The Department of Justice announced today that several Californian companies and individuals that had previously supplied beef to the National School Lunch Program have agreed on a settlement involving allegations of inhumane handling of cattle and avoid inspection of the work. 

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) filed suit under the whistleblower provisions of the False Claims Act (FCA) after one of their investigators observed alleged inhumane cattle handling and videotaped their observations. The government joined in the suit that included the defendants Westland Meat Co. and Hallmark Meat Packing Company in Chino, California. Additional claims were brought because the defendants had conceiled the face that Aaron “Arnie” Magidow, a convicted felon, was a partner in some of the facility's operations.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations apply to those who supply food to the National School Lunch Program. These regulations prohibit the inhumane handling of cattle and require that facilities and treatment of animals be regularly inspected. 

 “Children across the country depend on the National School Lunch Program to provide them with a healthy meal each day, so we all depend on companies providing food to the program to follow the rules designed to ensure those meals are safe to eat,” said Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division Stuart F. Delery.  “The Justice Department will pursue aggressively anyone whose unlawful conduct puts the safety of our food at risk.”  

The National School Lunch Program is administered by the USDA. It is a federally-assisted meal program for children and provides free lunches each school da. All the ground beef containing the products of the defendants was recalled on February 16, 2008 and those suppliers are no longer able to be involved in the National School Lunch Program.