March 13, 2008

The president of a slaughterhouse at the heart of the largest meat recall denied under oath on Wednesday, but then grudgingly admitted, that his company had apparently introduced sick cows into the hamburger supply.

He then tried to minimize the significance.

The executive, Steve Mendell of the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company of Chino, Calif., said, “I was shocked. I was horrified. I was sickened,” by video that showed employees kicking or using electric prods on “downer” cattle that were too sick to walk, jabbing one in the eye with a baton and using forklifts to push animals around.

The video was taken by an undercover investigator from the Humane Society of the United States. One tape showed a worker using a garden hose to try to squirt water up the nose of a downed cow, a technique that Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat who conducted the hearing where Mr. Mendell testified, referred to as waterboarding.

Testifying before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr. Mendell, who appeared only after being subpoenaed, assured lawmakers that despite his lack of knowledge about conditions at the plant, sick animals were not slaughtered for food, so no safety issue existed.

But Mr. Mendell retracted the statement when shown a second video in which a “downer” cow was shocked and abused by workers trying to move it to the “kill box,” then finally shot with a bolt gun and dragged by a chain to the processing area.

When Mr. Mendell told the committee he was unaware of the abuses, Mr. Stupak asked him, “What’s your curiosity, as president and C.E.O. of the company you’re responsible for?”

Mr. Mendell replied that after he had seen the first video, he concluded that “it was a regulatory violation, for sure, it was inhumane treatment, for sure,” but that he did not believe it was a food safety issue until he saw the second video on Wednesday.

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March 11, 2008

He is a practicing vegan and animal rights activist who has written a book about rescuing animals from the horrors of factory farming.

But as the author himself notes, his theme throughout the book is, emphatically, "Love the sinner, hate the sin."

As a result, "Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds About Animals and Food" does not make the carnivore reader feel akin to Attila the Hun. In the majority of the book, Baur exchanges the hysterical sob-story methods employed by some of his ilk for a straightforward account of what he's seen and what he does.

Baur came to animal activism after growing up in California and traveling the country after college. Reading Frances Moore Lappe's "Diet for a Small Planet" made him more aware, in his words, of "how wasteful factory farming was, how many resources were used to produce meat."

But it was a series of visits to the now-defunct Lancaster Stockyards in Pennsylvania that propelled Baur into his life's work.

At Lancaster he learned about "downed animals" - cows, sheep or pigs that were "lying dead or injured in the alleyways or the holding pens."

During one of his visits in the summer of 1986, Baur came upon an injured sheep that had been tossed on what was known as the "dead pile."

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