Meat supply needs monitoring
Re “Meat roulette,” Opinion, Feb. 25
We’ve been in the dairy business for years and always take good care of our animals. It’s a given that eventually cows go to the meatpacking plant. This is a fact of life and part of the business.
What has happened to Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. is a shame. It has received awards over the years for the quality of meat it produced. The issue of cruelty to animals should have been dealt with when it came to light and ended there. Instead, the company was thrown to the wolves by the Humane Society of the United States and the media, and hundreds of people were put out of jobs. How humane is that?
Where were the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors during all of this? A major part of the blame lies there. They are supposed to monitor what goes on at the plant to ensure high standards. They were not doing their job, so now a viable business is ruined and many people are without jobs.
The meat recall is ridiculous. The meat from Westland/Hallmark has always been top quality.
Do we want to depend on imported meat, where there is very little or no quality control?
Judy Hettinga
Ontario
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Christopher D. Cook suggests increasing the number and role of meat inspectors. But inspectors can’t be everywhere all the time. Technology, on the other hand, gives us the capability to monitor what every plant is doing at any given moment, using citizens as free public watchdogs. I think we should have cameras taping the work of every meat plant in the nation, and the footage should be streamed live on the Internet. That way workers won’t be able to escape the eyes of the public. It’s a solution that’s cost effective and has the potential to dramatically increase meat safety.
Privacy advocates may cry foul, but if we can have cameras policing drivers at stoplights, why not cameras in meat plants? As long as workers are informed, I think their privacy rights should take a back seat to the safety of our food supply.
Jennifer Hontz
Venice
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Cook’s article could have been written by Upton Sinclair more than 100 years ago. I recently read Sinclair’s muckraking novel, “The Jungle,” and was amazed at how many meatpacking hazards are still around today. Teddy Roosevelt wanted to find out if such conditions were really true, so he appointed his own commission to investigate the Chicago meatpacking plants where Sinclair did research for his novel. The commission verified nearly all of the conditions that Sinclair had described and recommended increasing the number of meat inspectors and expanding their duties. All these issues were supposed to have been addressed by the Meat Inspection Act of 1906, the year “The Jungle” was published. Apparently, many of them are still with us.
Carlton S. Martz
Redlands