Meat Inspection Safety

Before 1958 in the United States, there was no such thing as a Humane Slaughter Act. Processing plants would go about business without stunning the animal before slaughtering, there were no sanitary rules in place, and a lot of the meat product would spoil because there were no proper handling techniques in place. What really caused in uproar in the nation was when Upton Sinclair wrote the book "The Jungle." "Meat scraps were left in large piles inside buildings that leaked...Rats and mice would eat off piles of meat and defecate on the meat...Workers would add poison to bread and place the pieces on the meat piles in hopes of killing the rats...When meat was needed for use, the meat with the poisoned bread and dead rats were used as well." If one could imagine reading this from "The Jungle" in 1904 a person would feel very violated and taken advantage of. So, in 1906 the Federal Meat Inspection act was put into place. This act called for inspection of the animal before and post slaughter and inspection of the plant.

Not much happened in the meat industry between 1906 and 1958.  The Humane Slaughter Act arose in 1958 and it demanded that animals undergo no suffering prior to slaughter. This act required that animals were to be numb to pain by a blow to the forehead, gunshot to the head, electrical stunning on the forehead or breathing in a chemical such as carbon dioxide prior to being killed. These processes are meant to be fast and painless for the animal and the butcher. Immediately following this act, meat packers noticed an increase in meat quality, the animals were no longer fighting the slaughter process, so there was less bruising to the meat itself. There was also reduced stress of the animal, which significantly increased the quality and tenderness of the meat as well.

With the Wholesome Meat Act in 1967-came labeling of meat products and prevention of false labeling. More recently, a slaughterhouse in Ireland got caught mislabeling and selling "beef" to corporate companies and other countries. The companies quickly found out that the slaughterhouse had been false labeling their beef products. Their products actually contained horse meat as well as beef and they left the horse meat out of the labels on the packaging. It is hard to believe that problems like this are still an issue today. Most people believe they can trust their food system and know every product that is being put into their food. Fortunately, living in the United States we have many laws and regulations dealing with food safety to protect the consumers. Research is done daily to find new pathogenic microorganisms that cause foodborne illnesses and preventative steps are put into place by law in order to ensure a safe commodity.

However, with federal budget cuts that are currently happening in our government they want to lay off 8,400 meat inspectors for two weeks this year. It is scary to think of where our nation has been without meat regulation and how easy it could be slip back into old habits without authority laying down the law for consumer safety.


 regulatory acts.pptx-By: Casey Maddock Carlin
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/02/22/ireland-horse-meat/1939727/
http://townhall.com/news/us/2013/02/26/meat-plant-shutdowns-inevitable-in-budget-cuts-usda-n1521238