Slaughter House 101

No matter that farmers and ranchers across the nation work hard to ensure quality care for all their livestock; when the Food and Safety Inspection Service of the USDA fails to do their job of properly inspecting slaughter plants and enforcing the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act everyone suffers. The whole animal ag industry gets a bad name. Animal rights activists are more than eager to dump the entire animal ag industry into one big pot of boiling oil because of the FSIS's failings. The USDA is well aware of the problems with the FSIS and has more than once promised to correct the situation, and yet the FSIS remains understaffed and ill-equipped to perform uniform and thorough inspections. What is it going to take to get this federal agency back on track, doing the job they were meant to do? Is it going to take "cleaning" house and starting over? Whatever the course of disciplinary action it needed to happen "yesterday"! Promises of "We'll do better" just don't cut it. Jerold Mande, USDA Deputy Undersecretary for Food Safety may just find that his head will be one of those to roll, if he's lucky it may even be done humanely.