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.

Horses, health, and humanity

Karin Hauenstein — From recent news, it is getting known that America is bringing horse slaughter back on its soil. What the proponents of Commercial Horse Slaughter in the U.S. are not taking into consideration is the fact that the end “product” of this industry contains adrenaline and cortisol in levels far higher than what is not allowed in beef by law and regulated by the USDA.

If you want a real education yourself, Google “Commercial Horse Slaughter” and you will get one. This abhorrent practice was ill-regulated and only cursorily inspected for meat quality, with the standards at all U.S. Commercial Horse Slaughter Plants in the U.S. being almost non-existent. Someone was protecting this industry before, but no longer. The American Horse Racing Industry was feeding it. Are they still? Officially, No. Behind the scenes and out the back gates, Yes.

In Commercial Beef Slaughter, they call it “dark cutting”. Google that and you will get an education about the toxic hormones and steroids that are making their way into your hamburgers and steaks (especially fast food beef.) It causes Cancer and other disease in humans and causes the Commercial Beef Slaughter Industry’s largest financial losses every year.

Equines and bovines are completely different species of animals. The equine senses are better than canines and their herd mentality extremely keen. It is virtually and practically impossible to kill a horse humanely in a commercial setting. The proponents of this issue are lying to everyone and the proof will come in the toxicology reports that will be mandated by the lawsuits filed against them and the USDA for attempting to distribute harmful levels of these toxic hormones and steroids to the population.

Every single head-shot horse is a “bad kill” with their autonomic endocrine systems delivering extreme amounts of adrenaline and cortisol throughout the flesh after the shot. The evidence of this is in the pulsing of the horse post-shot. Review some Commercial Horse Slaughter videos and see for yourself. This also happens in slower, dumber bovines at a much lesser rate, but is supposedly tracked and managed by USDA officials on their lines—the same USDA that is already stressed and thin in ranks because of the economic budget issues our country is facing.

The evidence that will make this “product” illegal is scientific. The Commercial Beef Slaughter Industry is already suppressing information regarding the levels of adrenaline and cortisol that are making their way into U.S. diets, causing cancer and other diseases. All of this will come to light with further scrutiny.

I thank the proponents of Commercial Horse Slaughter in the U.S. for being so outspoken with their propaganda and misinformation to bring so much attention to this issue. We all need to make a concerted effort to know exactly what we are ingesting and stay away from products that are proven harmful to our health.

Humane Chemical Euthanasia is and has always been the only humane method of getting rid of "unwanted" horses. It costs less than one month's feed and board. Rendering of carcasses is available in many communities.

Humanity cannot be legislated; toxic levels of hormones and steroids in meat consumed by humans can be. Please, consider this in the battle against Commercial Horse Slaughter.



About the Author

Karin Hauenstein is a horse activist who protests via horse rides through the country against commercial horse slaughter. Her mission is to end commercial horse slaughter in the US and put an end to cruelty against horses. Visit her website http://horseactivist.com/ at to read more about her work.

Research looks to preventing E coli through spray

[caption id="attachment_6853" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Diverse E -coli"][/caption]

E coli is headlined as a serious concern whenever there is an outbreak in the world, as happened in Germany recently.  But new research reveals how medical science is making advances on this terrible instrument of disease and death.

Professor Debora Foster of the Department of Chemistry and Biology at Ryerson University and her collaborators at the University of Southern California are looking at prevention by developing a spray that could be used for fruits and vegetables that potentially contain E coli, the kind of bacterium that infects the human intestine, leading to devastating illness.  That illness can be life threatening.

“We're investigating an antimicrobial peptide that interferes with the DNA repair mechanisms that enable the E. coli bacterium to survive exposure to human gastric acid,” Foster explained recently on the Ryerson University website.. “One of our natural defence mechanisms is the killing action of stomach acid.  Our strategy is to develop a preventative antimicrobial agent that enhances the killing action.

We are very excited by our initial findings. We will continue testing to develop a deeper understanding of the peptide’s effectiveness” she said.

Ryerson is one of Canada’s flagship research universities, that refers to itself as one “clearly on the move.”

The Food Poison Journal points to a number of threats from E coli either in the United States or abroad. In May it was reported  that a fourth death had been linked to e-coli-0111 in Japan.  Although E-coli 0157 is labeled the worst of the pathogenic strains, E.coli 011 has been found to also increase serious illness that can lead to death.

While the USDA stresses it has made progress in undercutting the threat of E coli in the United States, it remains a concern because of the possibility of food being used as a weapon by terrorist groups who could poison the food supply.    Yet the ongoing worries about natural biological threats concerns this federal agency in its progress toward protecting the food supply.

Just how much risk is there from these biological threats like E coli?  Elizabeth Hagen, undersecretary of food safety for the US agriculture Department says this: “One in six Americans will get sick this year from the food they eat. That is not acceptable. Science and data and the pathogens themselves evolve, and we must do the same if we’re going to keep pace with emerging threats.”

E coli is a threat even in places considered safe and healthy.  For example, Portland, Oregon's water has been highly touted as good drinking water, yet in 2009 it was reported how the Water Bureau issued an alert of E coli found in some of the water in Washington County.  That trace amount reportedly caused some Portland area residents mild illness and was quickly eradicated through draining one of the catchment areas.

The USDA regulates some food production in the US.  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration monitors others, including production outside the United States, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks public-health threats that emanate from all over the world.