Largest beef recall in US history reveals compromised food supply

The video, released January 30 by the Humane Society, shows cows that are too sick or crippled to stand up being shoved, dragged and rolled across cement-floored pens at the Hallmark Meat Packing slaughterhouse in Chino, California. Immobile cows whose hides are caked with manure can be seen being rammed with forklifts, jabbed in the eyes, dragged along by chains, shocked and subjected to simulated drowning with high-pressure hoses to get them on their feet in the so-called “kill box” of the facility.

The Hallmark plant is a subsidiary of Westland Meat Company, which has sold about 100 million pounds of beef, worth $146 million, to the federal Department of Agriculture over the past five years for its school lunch and needy families programs. Westland received the department’s “Supplier of the Year” award for the National School Lunch Program in 2004-05.