RICOCHETS

By now the HSUS video of downers being abused is a well-established American icon, but I can't let go of that "bombshell" analogy, so now we have all the stories where the facts and their respective spins go bouncing around from one media format to another, with the requisite newspaper editorials condemning this supposed isolated incident and demanding "action" to assure we can all swallow animal corpses without fear, and with "reaction" from "experts" like Temple Grandin.

Grandin, who makes her career off the meat industry, tends to low-ball its ill effects (outside of, you know, making the cattle nervous and anxious when their kill chutes are poorly designed), so it's worth noting that she baldly states that the stuff seen in the video - which, cruelty aside, is all about flouting USDA regulations and slaughtering high-risk downers - is probably going on right now at "10 or 15 percent of the plants" in the United States. In other words, even if we lowball Grandin's own lowballing and take the 10% estimate, take the record-setting amount of meat just recalled because there were downers in it (and once again, downers are the most likely to be carrying BSE) and multiply it by 650. I don't even want to figure out all the zeroes in that.

We'll let this one Baltimore Sun article stand in for all the others, as it does have a couple more good gems: F'rinstance, try to reconcile these - the USDA promises to "ramp up" its inspection process, while at the same time claiming that "We know our inspectors were correctly inspecting the plant" in question. Huh? If they were already correct, how can you make them more correcter?

And Amanda Eamich, the spokeswoman behind that quote, also blithely states that (quoting the article) "the department's investigation found that the mistreatment documented on the video was an exception to its practices." Uh huh... an exception to its practices? Or to its supposed policies??? After all, if this stuff was going on and the USDA official present couldn't find it, how can the USDA speak with any credibility about what was or was not regularly happening at this plant... or any other, for that matter? What exactly is their basis of data by which they can determine this is an "exception"? The plant's records of its own violations? What? Inquiring stomachs want to know.

And as one last tidbit... A Mad Criminal is on the loose! While one of the two men wholly responsible for this 143-million-pound recall has been taken into custody, the other remains at large! That means Luis Sanchez could be out there somewhere forcing downers to walk to slaughter even as we speak! Doesn't the law enforcement here seem a little lackadaisical? I mean, we're talking about the two most evil men in the whole slaughter industry, the two who refuse to follow the rules and who, all by themselves, came up and implemented this plan to subvert USDA regulations - and one of these two is still out there, continuing, no doubt, to instigate more isolated incidents!!! The horror! Seriously, though, I hope that no language barrier prevents these two from singing.