CRIMES WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES - gpvec

Crimes Without ConsequenCes
Federal enforcement at U.S. slaughterhouses
In March 2008, the Congressional Research Service published a report for Congress
entitled USDA Meat Inspection and the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. The report
cites a number of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) enforcement actions at
federally inspected slaughter plants for humane handling and slaughter in the year 2007:
167,000 regulatory verification procedures, 700 noncompliance records (NRs) and 12
plant suspensions.
These statistics sound impressive until they are put in perspective. Using data for total
USDA enforcement actions taken from quarterly enforcement reports for the period
October 1, 2006 through September 30, 2007, it is revealed that humane handling and
slaughter was the subject of only 1.9 percent of all USDA verification procedures, 0.6
percent of all NRs, and 17 percent of all plant suspensions.
For this report, Jones reviewed approximately 500 humane handling and humane
slaughter noncompliance records issued by the USDA at federal slaughterhouses during
an 18-month period. This represented no significant increase in the number of citations
for humane slaughter issued by the federal government since the mid-1990s. Overall, less
than 1 percent of all citations for violations of federal food safety laws were issued for
humane handling or humane slaughter, consistent with the figure for 2007 cited above.
Suspensions of slaughter plant operations by the USDA for humane handling and
slaughter violations did go up slightly during the past decade. However, serious
inconsistencies were found in the manner in which these violations were handled between
individual plants and between USDA district offices. In some cases, slaughterhouse
operations were halted for relatively minor offenses, such as failure to provide water to
animals in pens, while in other cases, USDA officials stood by and took no action when
plant workers were observed to be repeatedly butchering fully conscious animals.
The differences among USDA districts on plant suspensions are particularly striking.
For example, during the past decade, the USDA district for the state of California, which
covers just 32 plants, issued 15 suspensions for humane violations, while the district
for the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, which covers 139 plants, issued just 4
suspensions. The largest numbers of suspensions were issued by the offices covering
California, Texas, and Michigan and Wisconsin. The offices covering Kansas and
Missouri; Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee; and Delaware, District of Columbia,
Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia issued the smallest numbers.
Jones also found that cattle were more likely to be the victims of inhumane treatment
than pigs, and that large and small plants were more likely to be suspended for humane
violations than very small plants. The most common types of humane deficiencies were
failure to provide water to animals in pens; failure to maintain pens and other facilities in
good repair; and shackling, hoisting and/or cutting of conscious animals.
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