CRIMES WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES - gpvec

8. Enforcement of State Laws
Animals killed for meat in the U.S. are slaughtered at more than 2,000 non-federal
plants. These plants are inspected for compliance with food safety regulations, including
those pertaining to humane handling and slaughter, by state and/or federal agricultural
inspectors (see Section 2.5 for discussion of plant inspection authority). Although a vast
majority of animals slaughtered for food in the United States are killed at federal plants,
the treatment of animals at non-federal plants should be addressed in any review of U.S.
humane slaughter practices.
8.1 Analysis of State Enforcement Records
To evaluate the level of humane law enforcement at non-federal slaughter plants, public
records requests were submitted to the 30 U.S. states operating meat inspection programs.
The following documents were requested: 1) all records relating to enforcement actions
for violations of humane handling and slaughter regulations and 2) all communications,
including notices, directives and memos, relating to humane handling and slaughter. The
requests were for all relevant documents generated during a 3-year time period, from
January 1, 2002 through December 31, 2004.
All states responded to the document request within two months. However, relatively
few documents were provided, as illustrated in Table 21 (enforcement actions) and Table
22 (communications). Of 30 states, only 11 had records of any enforcement actions for
humane slaughter during the 3-year time period, and just five had produced or distributed
any communications relating to humane slaughter, other than notices or directives issued
by the USDA-FSIS. Fifteen of the 30 states provided no documents of any kind related
to humane handling and slaughter of animals at its state-inspected plants. The states
providing no documents are responsible for inspecting a total of 600 slaughter plants.
The state of Texas supplied the largest number of enforcement records. Of the 91
enforcement records provided by all states, only 60 were for state-inspected plants, and
of those, one-half (30) were from Texas. Ohio produced 10 records. Some or all of the
records provided by North Carolina and Virginia were for federal plants, which these
states inspect under authority of the Talmadge-Aiken Act (see Section 2.5). Several other
Talmadge-Aiken states—Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Mississippi and Utah—provided no
documents related to humane slaughter. Two states—Indiana and Georgia—responded
that they possessed documents responsive to the request but were unable to readily
provide them as their records were not filed by type of violation, requiring that all files
for the 3-year period be manually searched for those relating to humane slaughter. 211
211 Dr. Lee Myers, Georgia state veterinarian, originally indicated that NRs were kept at the Georgia Dept. of
Agriculture, and would be searched manually. He also indicated that the department does not normally conduct
this type of search, but that an individual could come to the department to conduct a search of the files. The
Georgia Department of Agriculture open records coordinator later responded that enforcement records were
not available at the department, but were kept at the individual slaughterhouses, and the state would assess a
minimum fee of $200 to initiate a search to determine whether documents existed.
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