NOTE: In a related event, the WSB-TV report critical of the Humane
Society of the United States (HSUS), that was removed from virtually
all public sources, has just been reposted back on YouTube, courtesy
of monstersnakesforums.com

Watch it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTj1T31dOAM&feature=player_embedded
-----------------------------------------

Burlington Free Press (VT)
Meat packer strikes back over cruelty claim
Lawyer says 'plant' provoked calves' mistreatment
By Sam Hemingway, Free Press Staff Writer •
Sunday, November 8, 2009
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200991107027

The attorney for a Grand Isle slaughterhouse shut down late last month
on allegations of abuse of days-old calves says the person who
secretly filmed footage that led to the closure provoked a plant
worker to engage in some of the mistreatment caught on film.

The video, which shows workers kicking, hitting and repeatedly
stunning male “bob calves” with electric prods, was shown to federal
and state agriculture officials in late October and led to an abrupt
shutdown of Bushway Packing Inc. on Oct. 30.

The scenes depicted in the video have triggered twin criminal
investigations by state and federal officials.

The undercover videographer denied wrongdoing and said he did not
encourage anyone to mistreat animals.

Lawyer Peter Langrock of Middlebury, the company’s attorney, said the
investigator working undercover for the Humane Society of the United
States encouraged a plant employee to sprinkle water on a calf lying
on the plant’s floor to increase the shock it would feel from an
electric cattle prod.

Under federal rules, such calves cannot be slaughtered unless they are
able to walk under their own power.

“The suggestion to throw the water on the calf was made by the fellow
taking the videos,” Langrock said last week. “He said, ‘Why don’t you
throw some water on it to get a better connection?’ That is not in the
audio and the video.”

The incident, featured in a video released by the animal welfare group
Monday, shows a man swearing and striking a calf that won’t get up.
The man then tells the calf, “You’re getting shocked.”

When the calf fails to stand up, the man dribbles water on the head of
the animal and begins poking it with the prod, first on the head and
then on other parts of its body.

Langrock said the worker last week met with federal Agriculture
Department investigators and told them about the society
investigator’s alleged role in the incident.

The investigator, through a statement released by the Humane Society,
disputed Langrock’s charge. The society declined to identify him by
name to protect his anonymity for possible future undercover work.

“Not only does the audio on the full video disprove this demonstrably
false allegation, but I was employed as a floor cleaner and in no way
had the authority to instruct anyone to do anything,” the investigator
said.

To back up the videographer’s claim, the Humane Society released an
uncut version of the water-sprinkling sequence to the Free Press on
Friday. No instructions from the undercover investigator about putting
water on the calf can be heard during the segment.

Langrock, in his interview, acknowledged that some mistakes were made
by workers at Bushway. He said the company is working to address the
mistakes in hopes of winning permission from federal and state
officials to reopen soon.

“We’ve seen the tape. There are things that were not done according to
our rules,” he said. “We don’t want to become a poster child. We want
to get back to handling Vermont’s slaughtering needs for bob calves.”

Easy target
Before it was shut down, Bushway Packing was the state’s largest
processor of male calves, handling close to 2,000 animals a week
picked up from farms in the northern half of Vermont and upstate New
York, Langrock said.

The meat derived from the calves’ slaughter was shipped to Atlantic
Veal and Lamb Inc., in Brooklyn, N.Y., and ended up in hot dogs and
processed meat products.

One of Bushway Packing’s owners, John McCracken of St. Albans, also
owns McCracken Livestock, a business that transports calves from farms
to the slaughterhouse.

He now might have to ship the calves to slaughterhouses in Ohio, a
12-hour trip that will likely take a toll on the young calves and
reduce the number capable of being processed, Langrock said.

Another owner is Frank Perretta, who ran the now-bankrupt Perretta
Packing Co. in Brier Hill, N.Y. Perretta was in charge of operations
at Bushway Packing and can be heard on the video joking to a worker
that a fallen calf “looks like you on Friday night.”

Neither owner could be reached for comment last week.

Langrock said his clients understand the business of slaughtering
calves is an unpleasant task, but a necessary one.

“Slaughterhouses are not pretty businesses,” he said, “but there was
no unnecessary suffering inflicted by these people. ... The people
that do this have pets, have farm animals. They’re straight, normal
human beings who have a job to do, and they do it.”

The Humane Society’s investigator said he struggled not to reveal his
revulsion at what he was seeing while he was secretly taping what was
going on at the plant during his two-month stint as floor cleaner.

“The really difficult part for me, as someone who cares deeply about
animals, was to witness such horrific cruelty,” the investigator said
in response to questions submitted by e-mail to him last week by the
Free Press.

“The images I have of them following me, bawling and trying to grab my
shirt sleeves to nurse are troubling,” he said. “I still can’t
comprehend how desensitized to suffering one would need to be in order
to harm these calves the way the workers and co-owner of the plant
did.”

The investigator also said several federal meat inspectors visited the
site during his time there. In the videos he shot, one inspector is
seen joking with workers and warning them not to do something that
might have caused another inspector to shut the plant down.

“During my time at Bushway, a few USDA inspectors that I hadn’t
previously seen came to the plant for several days,” he said. “My boss
told me and other employees to wash our hands frequently and to do it
where the inspectors could see us washing them.”

Langrock said he has doubts about the investigator’s credibility.

“I don’t know his name because I’m not sure we have a real name,” he
said. “You expect employees to use good faith when they are working
for you. This person wasn’t using good faith. He came for the sole
purpose of trying to get evidence.”

Langrock also blasted the Humane Society for choosing to focus on
Bushway Packing, which he said was a modern, well-run facility.

“The real story is these people picking this business,” he said. “You
look at the video. The plant is clean. It’s spotless.”

Humane Society officials said the decision to conduct undercover
surveillance at Bushway Packing was prompted by information it
received about conduct inside the facility earlier this year.

“We did receive a tip that there were problems occurring at this
plant, which led us to take a closer look and send an undercover
investigator there,” Mark Markarian, the society’s chief operating
officer, told reporters last week.

Markarian also noted the plant was cited for inhumane treatment three
times over a three-month span this year by agents for the Food Safety
and Inspection Service, a division of the federal Agriculture
Department.

The citations resulted in three one-day suspensions at the plant.
State agriculture officials said they did not know about the citations
until last week and wished federal authorities had informed the state
about them sooner.

A spokeswoman for the federal Agriculture Department said last week
the citations were periodically reported on the department’s Web site
and were available for anyone to review.

Addressing problems
Langrock said Bushway Packing’s owners, hoping to win permission from
regulators to restart operations, are taking steps to address concerns
raised by the undercover video — even though they believe it
misrepresented what was going on inside the plant.

“We have removed all the electronic prods, even though they are
permissible,” he said. “We’ve decided that it is better not to use
them.”

In their place, plant workers will employ “rattle paddles.” Langrock
said the device, when shaken, cand disturb the calf and get it to
stand up. He also said dead or downed calves will be kept separate
from ambulatory ones.

“Calves that are down will be given one opportunity to rise and then
they will be euthanized and put in an ‘inedible room,’” he said.
“We’re also going to have further training for workers, and only
trained employees will be allowed to handle livestock.”

Langrock said he put a list of the planned reforms in a letter being
sent to federal Agriculture Department officials to meet its demand
for “corrective actions” in response to the revelations in the Humane
Society video.

“They can say they brought that about, and it’s true,” Langrock said
of the Humane Society and the reforms being proposed. “This
investigation made us reassess cattle prods, and we think on the whole
they are not effective. They cause more problems than they resolve,
and so we’ve taken them out voluntarily.”

Paul Shapiro, a Humane Society official, offered lukewarm support for
the reforms.

“To the extent that progress is made in any circumstance, we of course
welcome it,” he said in a statement. “That said, the industry has
proven time and again that it seems incapable of self-regulation.
Policy reforms are desperately needed, including a ban on downer calf
slaughter and a prohibition on transport of calves under 10 days of
age.”

Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or e-mail at
shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com.

Mira,

I don't believe any good comes from these types of video releases however the ACORN undercover videos weren't much different.
There is nothing humane about raising massive numbers of animals for public consumption. Unfortunately too many folks are so disillusioned that they believe it can be done humanely.

I agree with you that if they are going to do some type of undercover taping, the video should only be released to the authorities and locked down as evidence--not to be disclosed to the public.

Well Mira, that cracks the egg in my beliefs that we are far too over populated and overly dependent on others to provide to begin with. I guess I'm in love with a fantasy of a planet that still revolved around folks producing their own and you had kids according to how much your land could provide, rather than how fast you could get back in the welfare line.

I realize they, the slaughter house, serve a purpose but it doesn't change the fact that the process of killing production animals, esp en masse, will never be "humane" as by definition it simply can't be.

Slaughter house can be humane Rye. In fact the purpose is to kill meat as quickly as possible with the least amount of stress. I suggest that you are more likely to find more quickly killed animals in a slaughter house then in hunting practices as the variables in a slaughter house kill are more controllable then in the woods. Ditto the old methods of killing on farms where not every kill was efficient or quick. As for people producing their own foods? That is impossible today and we country folk are just as likely to depend upon folks that are far removed from animals as they are to depend upon us. I am quite pleased that those urbanites depend upon rural folks. keeps our economy rolling and if they are living in high rise apartment buildings they are out of my hair while I walk the wilderness.

In all civilized societies people are dependent upon one another. While it is possible to be wholly self-sufficient, the quality of life is enrichened by interacting with one another for different needs. Isn't it easier to barter for soap and toilet paper than to take the time to make your own, time that could be spent doing something more productive?

I remember all the hippy communes springing up when I was young, they all had this idealistic philosophy that they would be self sufficient and what they couldn't grow or make they didn't need. The only ones that were half successful were the ones whos members got jobs and had money to spend.

Even if we only had a quarter of the population we do now, I can't imagine every family growing and raising all of their food, let alone making their own toilet paper.

Sides,who would have the time to build all those bridges we trap under & then have time to grow their own meat & potatoes? Or how about all those highways we travel to our traps and have carted our fur around the world? Wouldn't expect those runway models to be able to grow their own food and model that fur of ours would you?

I was in charge of making toilet paper!

Seems PETA got caught fabricating animal abuse because they didn't know that inspectors were already checking out the compliance of University Labs.


The Salt Lake Tribune
U. animal labs earned clean USDA inspections
Cruelty? » But PETA says the fed inspectors don't do their jobs.
By Brian Maffly
11/12/2009 09:59:57 AM MST
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_13765488

U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors were giving University of
Utah animal-research labs a thumbs up at the very time an "undercover"
animal-rights activist claims she was documenting miserable conditions
and illegal treatment of animals inside two U. facilities.

U. officials on Tuesday released annual inspection reports dating back
to 2005 in response to allegations of systemic abuse leveled by the
People for the Treatment of Animals (PETA). All the inspection reports
say the same thing: "No noncompliances identified."

"The University's labs are inspected frequently without warning or
advance notice by state and national agencies, and our labs have
always been in full compliance with all government guidelines for
animal care," U. administrators said in a prepared statement.

USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), is charged
with ensuring compliance with the Animal Welfare Act, which spells out
care standards for dogs, monkeys cats, pigs and other animals used in
laboratory experiments.

But that agency is "riddled with problems" and is ill-equipped to do
"a decent job," said PETA's Kathy Guillermo Wednesday at a Salt Lake
City press event where she displayed video her agent shot with hidden
cameras.

"There are 125 USDA inspectors and they're responsible for inspecting
every one of the 1,100 laboratories across America, as well as every
zoo, every circus, every animal breeder," said Guillermo, who heads

Virginia-based PETA's 10-staff laboratory investigations unit. "When
an inspector comes once a year, maybe twice, it's usually an announced
visit. They don't have time to look at anything more than a sampling
of paperwork. They only see the animals that are there that day. Our
investigator was there for eight months."

PETA used their investigator's log entries, video and photos to lodge
formal complaints against U. researchers and animal-care staff
Wednesday with USDA and the National Institutes of Health, which
provides most of the U.'s research grants. The group is also pursuing
a criminal complaint with the Humane Society of Utah.

"To subject animals to invasive experiments is bad enough, but
allowing them to languish in pain and misery without veterinary care
is despicable," Guillermo said. "The University of Utah has caused all
sorts of animals to suffer needlessly."

U. officials said they would evaluate PETA's claims.

"Allegations of misconduct are always taken seriously by the
University, even when such charges are made by an individual who
misrepresented herself in order to gain employment within the
University's labs," their statement said.

The statement also highlighted the social and medical value of
research conducted on campus, which is shedding new light on the
process of aging and neurodegenerative disorders.

"Animal research is conducted only when the project has a valuable
scientific purpose and is aimed at combating disease and relieving
human suffering," the statement said.

But PETA also filed government records requests Wednesday with the U.,
seeking the protocols used in the experiments in which they allege
violations.

"The university operates under a veil of secrecy and the only way we
find out what's happening with the animals is to take a camera
inside," she said. "What the university needs to do is stop putting up
its walls and gathering its wagons and deal with what are very serious
problems in its facilities."

PETA officials say some of the alleged mistreatment broke Utah's
animal cruelty laws. A Humane Society official confirmed its
investigator would look into the matter, with the possibility of
referring it to prosecutors.

PETA officials declined to make their agent, identified only as LZ,
available to reporters or divulge her identity.

"The investigator may very well do more undercover investigations and
she doesn't come forward because she is protecting her identity and
her privacy," Guillermo said. "She will be available to be interviewed
by any federal agent who needs to talk to her."

U. officials have a good idea of LZ's identity, but said they were not
comfortable releasing her name.

Guillermo also demanded that the U. stop taking shelter animals for
use in its laboratories. Only Utah and Minnesota require that
government-run shelters hand animals over for experimental research
upon request, while 17 states outlaw the practice.

Three shelters -- Davis County Animal Shelter in Fruit Heights, North
Utah Valley Animal Shelter in Lindon, and Tooele City Animal Shelter
-- have supplied dogs and cats to the university under Utah's "pound
seizure" law in recent months, records show. Initially, PETA had
mistakenly said Tooele County Animal Shelter was a pound-seizure
supplier. Animal transfer receipts instead show at least 10 dogs and
two cats were sold to the U. by the Tooele city shelter between
January and March.

Reporter Tony Semerad contributed to this report.