Oversight ‘Flaw’ Led to Meat Recall

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Steve Mendell poured millions of dollars into stainless-steel paneling and state-of-the art cleaning systems to upgrade the decades-old meatpacking plant he has run since the late 1990s, the Wall Street Journal reports.


But while Mr. Mendell focused his attention on the inside of the five-acre plant, he and other top executives at Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. spent little time monitoring the facility’s outdoor cattle pens, plant employees say.


Those cattle pens are where an undercover worker for the Humane Society of the United States, a private organization, secretly filmed workers last fall forcing sick or injured cows to their feet using forklifts and water hoses. Such downer cows are generally banned from the food supply because they carry higher risks of diseases, including mad-cow disease. The video helped trigger the largest recall of beef in U.S. history last month.


Mr. Mendell “ran a great ship…except for this one fatal flaw” in how he managed the cattle pens, says Cal Faello, former head of a beef-industry trade group, who has spoken with Mr. Mendell a handful of times since the crisis began.


Mr. Mendell, 55 years old, didn’t respond to requests for comment. After failing to show up when invited to appear before a congressional committee last month, he has been subpoenaed to testify tomorrow at a hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives on meat safety. It is unclear if or how he plans to answer questions.



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