Meat from cows that were illegally slaughtered at a California slaughterhouse probably entered the U.S. food supply, a senior U.S. Department of Agriculture official testified at a congressional hearing Wednesday.
The number of cows is unknown but probably exceeded the two shown in videos taken by an undercover animal-rights worker at the Westland/Hallmark Meat plant, which last month recalled 143 million pounds of beef, the largest meat recall ever, said Richard Raymond, the USDA's undersecretary of food safety.
The beef poses only a "remote" health risk to consumers, the USDA has repeatedly said, and no illnesses have been reported.
But members of Congress noted that it can take more than a decade for humans to develop symptoms of the fatal brain illness that can come from eating beef infected by mad cow disease. In its processing, Westland/Hallmark did remove parts of the cow most likely to pose a risk of the disease. That mitigates 99% of any possible risk to consumers, Raymond said. Since June 1, 2004, only two of 759,000 animals the USDA sampled had the disease.
The president of Westland/Hallmark, Steve Mendell, also testified that two cows shown in the videos probably had been illegally slaughtered. His lawyer, Asa Hutchinson, said later the meat could have been pulled out of the production line.
The videos showing abuses of cattle at the Chino, Calif., plant were shot by a worker for the Humane Society of the United States and supplied to the USDA.
Mendell had provided written testimony that the cows that were unable to walk, shown in one video he had seen, had been euthanized and not slaughtered. Cattle that cannot walk are generally banned from the food supply because they carry a higher risk of mad cow disease, E. coli and salmonella contamination.
Mendell was shown another video Wednesday -- which he said he hadn't seen, but which had been available for weeks on the Internet -- that showed a cow unable to walk being dragged into the plant's kill box.
Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., asked Mendell if it would be logical to conclude, based upon the videos, that two cows that couldn't walk were illegally slaughtered.
"That would be logical," Mendell replied.
The Humane Society's second video precipitated the beef recall Feb. 17 after the USDA found that the USDA veterinarian at the plant wasn't always called to check a downed cow. Cattle can be slaughtered if they go down after a pre-slaughter inspection and a USDA veterinarian finds their injury does not pose a food-safety risk.
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