Cattle inspections thwarted

That cat-and-mouse game is portrayed by past and current inspectors, lawmakers and an audit report that say the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety Inspection Service is easy to bypass and was failing to screen potentially sick cattle long before this week's beef recall, the largest in U.S. history.

A 2006 audit reviewed 12 slaughterhouses and showed that, despite federal regulations banning all cattle that cannot walk from the human food supply, 29 so-called downer animals were slaughtered. Of those, 20 had no documented physical injury that would demonstrate that they were not diseased, according to the report by the USDA's office of inspector general.

"Should serious animal diseases be detected in the United States, USDA's ability to quickly determine and trace the source of infections to prevent the spread of the disease could be impaired," the audit report says.

Shortcomings in the system have come under harsh light in the wake of the recall of 143 million pounds of beef from a Chino slaughterhouse, where an undercover investigator for the Humane Society of the United States https://community.hsus.org/campaign/CA_2008_investigation%3Fqp_source=gaba89 downer cattle being forced into the slaughter line.

Authorities said the health risk for the public was minimal and that most of the recalled meat may already have been consumed.

The federal Government Accountability Office launched investigations Tuesday into the USDA's oversight of food purchased for federal programs, including school lunches, after numerous lawmakers expressed outrage that weak dairy cattle were slaughtered at Hallmark/Westland, a major supplier of ground beef to the National School Lunch Program.

One USDA inspector, who asked not to be named because he is employed by the Inspection Service, said the agency did not have the adequate staff and resources to enforce multiple regulations on meat production given workers' efforts to dodge oversight.

"They know where I'm at. if I'm headed to the plant, they've got the radios to say, 'This guy's headed out to the pens,' " he said.