BOLINAS, Calif. — LATE on Saturday, Feb. 8, news broke of the recall of 8.7 million pounds of beef
that had come through a Northern California slaughterhouse. Social
media buzzed with tweets and posts pronouncing it the latest example of a
dysfunctional industrialized food system incapable of producing safe
meat. “Buy local!” “Know your farmer!” “Eat grass-fed beef!”
The problem was that this slaughterhouse, the Rancho Feeding Corporation, didn’t handle only commodity beef.
Here,
amid wind-swept pastures of coastal California in the epicenter of the
nation’s sustainable food movement, dozens of small- and medium-scale
farms and ranches, including mine, have been affected by the recall.
These are grass-based operations, many of them certified organic, whose
owners have labored for decades to create a food stream that is humane,
ecological and wholesome.
A
Rancho employee called the next morning with the news: All the beef
that had gone through the plant in 2013 was covered. No exceptions.
Every ounce of meat remaining in the public food supply had to be turned
back in. All of it would be destroyed. The slaughterhouse provided no
further information.
An Agriculture Department news release
said the recall was necessary because the facility “processed diseased
and unsound animals and carried out these activities without the benefit
or full benefit of federal inspection. Thus, the products are
adulterated.” There was no suggestion of any plant-wide contamination,
and it noted that there were no cases of human illness associated with
any of the beef. The Agriculture Department has refused requests for
more information, citing a continuing investigation by its inspector
general.
We
operate a small meat company supplied exclusively by our ranch and nine
other ranches that all follow the same protocols. Complying with the
recall would mean destroying over 100,000 pounds of meat we had
intentionally frozen throughout the year to extend our beef season. Our
beef comes from grass-fed cattle. We never use hormones; we feed no
drugs. We know the complete history of each animal, from the identity of
its mother to where it spent each day of its life. And we knew that all
our own cattle received full federal inspections at the slaughterhouse,
both ante- and post-mortem.
While
it’s painful to see our beautiful animals die, my husband, Bill, or our
cattle manager has always accompanied every single one to the
slaughterhouse stunning area. Being handled by a familiar person
reassures the animals and guarantees that none is ever mistreated. We
have advocated that everyone raising livestock do the same.
We
are involved with each of the federal inspections as well: of live
animals, whole carcasses, lymph glands and internal organs. We observe
and record, at every stage, details about the condition of each carcass
and the viscera. These protocols are labor-intensive, but the data is
invaluable in early identification of quality problems and for assessing
which lineages provide the best beef.
Those
carcasses are cut in quarters and then transported from the
slaughterhouse to a federally certified processing plant. Here again,
before butchering, each carcass is inspected by both Agriculture
Department employees and us.
Why
were our rigorous procedures insufficient to keep us out of the recall?
The Agriculture Department’s tools for safeguarding the nation’s meat
supply are blunt and clumsy instruments, especially when dealing with
independent farmers. In a battle between the slaughterhouse and the
federal agency over proper inspections for animals in its commodity meat
business, it was apparently decided that it would be simpler and more
convenient to conduct a blanket recall. We and about 35 other farming
and ranching families are the collateral damage.
Beyond
the immediate financial strain caused by the recall, it threatens the
very existence of the Bay Area’s smaller-scale grass-fed and organic
farms. The facility involved was the only remaining Bay Area
slaughterhouse, and there are just a handful in all of Northern
California. Now the recall has precipitated the slaughterhouse’s
closure. Without it, ranchers will be forced to either transport their
cattle hundreds of miles for slaughter or exit the business.
People
love supporting local food and farms. But when was the last time you
saw someone wearing a T-shirt that said “Support Local Slaughterhouses”?
But if we want to eat eggs, dairy and meat, we must come to terms with
the need for good slaughter facilities available to all farmers. From
1979 to 2009, California went from having 70 slaughterhouses to 23.
Because it is more complicated and costly to do so, nearly all large
facilities refuse to work with smaller farms. This makes slaughtering
the most serious bottleneck in the sustainable food chain.
Congress
should require all slaughterhouses to open their doors to local
farmers, perhaps one day a week. And the Agriculture Department should
assist in establishing and maintaining smaller-scale slaughterhouses in
every region.
Understaffing
of food-safety inspectors may have played a role in the recall. Stan
Painter, president of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection
Locals, has suggested that federal inspectors are overextended and may not have had time to properly examine all of Rancho’s meat.
That
makes it an apt time to require video cameras throughout every
slaughterhouse. Tapes would be made available to meat inspectors, and
regularly handed over to the Agriculture Department as part of its
oversight. The idea is not far-fetched. Cameras in slaughter facilities
are already commonplace in Britain. In 2005, a United States Senate
committee recommended requiring slaughterhouses to install cameras to
ensure humane animal handling. As recently as 2008, the Agriculture
Department gave the idea serious consideration. If cameras were
installed at all key inspection points, it could also help people like
us prove that the meat received full, proper inspections.
The
way we track each animal is rare in the food industry. But the
technology to follow an individual animal from birth to slaughter exists
and is relatively inexpensive. If all animals were routinely tracked, a
recall like this could be a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer.
Our
company is appealing the Agriculture Department’s decision to include
us in this blanket recall. If allowed to stand, it will be financially
devastating for us and for many other farming and ranching families. But
even more abhorrent is the waste. We took the lives of our animals to
feed people. Being forced to throw away their meat would be sacrilege.
No comments:
Post a Comment