うわあ、こわすぎ

Company Orders Largest Recall of Ground Beef - The New York Times

The recall by the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company, based in Chino, Calif., comes after a widening animal-abuse scandal that started after the Humane Society of the United States distributed an undercover video on Jan. 30 that showed workers kicking sick cows and using forklifts to force them to walk.

The video raised questions about the safety of the meat, because cows that cannot walk, called downer cows, pose an added risk of diseases including mad cow disease. The federal government has banned downer cows from the food supply.

Agriculture officials said there was little health risk from the recalled meat because the animals had already passed pre-slaughter inspection and much of the meat had already been eaten. In addition, the officials noted that while mad cow disease was extremely rare, the brains and spinal cords from the animals — the area most likely to harbor the disease — would not have entered the human food chain.

“The great majority has probably been consumed,” said Dr. Richard Raymond, the Agriculture Department’s under secretary for food safety.

The video was embarrassing for the Department of Agriculture, as inspectors are supposed to be monitoring slaughterhouses for abuse. It surfaced after a year of increasing concerns about the safety of the meat supply amid a sharp increase in the number of recalls tied to a particularly deadly form of the E. coli pathogen.

全米人道協会が、1月30日に「へたれ牛」をけったり、フォークリフト無理やり運んだりして、本来食肉にしてはならない牛を加工しようとしてるとこを撮影したビデオを公開したんだって。米国農務省は、と殺前の検査を通り、すでに肉のほとんどが出回ってしまったあとであること、脳やせき髄などの危険部位は出回る可能性が低いから、問題は少ないとしている。農務省は、と殺場に検視官を派遣して動物虐待がないか監視してるはずなのに、このビデオが出て恥をかいたってさ。

ビデオへのリンクはこちら：
https://community.hsus.org/campaign/CA_2008_investigation?qp_source=gaba89

輸出用は平気なんですか…アメリカじゃ、この問題の加工場からの肉が「給食」にも使われたそうですよ。