This press release landed in my in-box this morning:

SignalDemand, the global leader in on-demand price and margin optimization software, announced today that its CEO Mike Neal was elected to the American Meat Institute (AMI) board of directors. Mr. Neal will serve a three-year term and will work with other board members to represent the industry and advocate its views, be a catalyst for continuous improvement, and enhance the membership’s ability to anticipate and respond to the needs of customers and suppliers.

[read the whole press release at marketwire.com]

The American Meat Institute represents meatpacking and processing plants, and also operates the meatsafety.org website.

Factory processed foods are your friends. Wait, no they aren’t. It’s too early in the morning for me to be looking at this.

At any rate, that’s just a sample of the exciting and sexy info that lands in the meatblog mailbox.

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]