CRIMES WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES - gpvec

enforCement of federal laW in u.s. Plants
To determine the type of humane violations prompting issuance of NOIE and
suspensions, requests were submitted for plant NRs filed in association with these
enforcement actions. Documents were received and reviewed for all NOIE and
approximately half of suspensions issued for humane violations from 1998 through
2006. (Appendix C offers case studies of establishments receiving enforcement actions
for humane handling/slaughter during this period.) It might be expected that NOIEs are
more commonly issued for humane handling violations, and suspensions used in response
to the more serious humane slaughter violations. It was found that humane handling
infractions were, in fact, more frequently the cause of NOIE issuance, but violations of
the humane handling rules and violations of humane slaughter rules were the cause of an
equal number of suspensions (Table 15).
Notes
Table 15. Federal Suspensions by Type of Violation
1998 to 2006
51
NOIE Suspensions
# % # %
Humane handling 5 50.0 16 27.1
Humane slaughter 2 20.0 17 28.8
both 3 30.0 3 5.1
Not known a 0 0.0 23 39.0
Total 10 ---- 59 ----
a Enforcement records not available at time of the writing of this report.
Table 16 shows the number and percent of suspensions for inhumane slaughter by
plant size. During the time period studied large and small plants had a disproportionate
percentage of the total number of suspensions, while very small plants had fewer
suspensions than would be expected given the number of U.S. plants in the “very small”
size category. There are several possible explanations for this finding, including that
inspectors in very small plants are less likely to observe or report humane incidents or
that supervisory personnel in FSIS district offices are less likely to take action against
very small plants. It does not necessarily indicate that animals slaughtered in the smallest
U.S. plants are more humanely treated than animals in larger plants.