The Humane Society has captured and compiled video evidence of abuses at Hallmark, a major U.S. meat processing facility. Sick and injured cattle were treated cruelly and introduced into the food supply despite their health. They’ve released a press release that details the situation:

Hallmark’s Chino, Calif., slaughter plant supplies the Westland Meat Co., which processes the carcasses. The facility is the second-largest supplier of beef to USDA’s Commodity Procurement Branch, which distributes the beef to needy families, the elderly and also to schools through the National School Lunch Program. Westland was named a USDA “supplier of the year” for 2004-2005 and has delivered beef to schools in 36 states. More than 100,000 schools and child care facilities nationwide receive meat through the lunch program.

[read the entire release

Information about what Congress is doing in reaction to the situation is being compiled on the Human Society website, and excerpts of the video evidence are also available. (These are the same videos that ABC has been reporting on, they're very disturbing. Far, far more so than so-called "humane" slaughterhouse practices).

BusinessWeek has a clear summary of the situation thus far, and last night reported:

The hamburger chains Jack-In-the-Box and In-N-Out as well more than 150 school districts around the nation have banned meat from a Chino slaughterhouse after a video showed workers brutalizing sick and crippled cows, officials said Friday.

The New York City public school system -- the nation's largest with 1.1 million students -- pulled all hamburgers from its menus.

[read the entire article]

Mark Bittman provides a concise overview of the environmental problems and issues surrounding industrial meat production and increased meat consumption in a New York Times Week in Review piece titled, “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler.”

Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests.

Just this week, the president of Brazil announced emergency measures to halt the burning and cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and grazing land. In the last five months alone, the government says, 1,250 square miles were lost.

The world’s total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period. (In the developing world, it rose twice as fast, doubling in the last 20 years.) World meat consumption is expected to double again by 2050, which one expert, Henning Steinfeld of the United Nations, says is resulting in a “relentless growth in livestock production.”

[read the whole article

The article first caught my eye when I saw a blog post screeching that Bittman was again in hysterical vegetarian mode, advocating that the eating meat be outlawed. I can’t find the post now, only a few hours later, and guess it was deleted by the author.

Bittman is not a vegetarian, nor is he advocating for people to became vegetarians.

Fishinnards and I are fortunate enough, both economically and in terms of proximity to good markets, to buy free-range, sustainable meats. It’s unfortunate that this remains a privilege rather than a right. (We tried the free-range potatoes, but they just weren’t as good).