Please Tell the USDA To Close the Downer Loophole!

I just received an email today from The Humane Society of the United States asking us to help send a message today to Secretary Schafer. We need to apply pressure to STOP the horrific abuses that we have witnessed with downer cows. Remember, it was because of the HSUS undercover investigators that the cruelty was revealed in the first place. The USDA or even the FDA were nowhere to be found and had no idea. Once again the U.S. regulators have failed! Now that these heinous crimes have been exposed perhaps the USDA would consider doing the right thing for a change. What is the right thing you ask? How about MAKING slaughterhouses ABIDE by the LAW. Isn't that why our laws were created... to be followed. Or should we ALL start running RED LIGHTS from now on???

Please click here to be directed to the HSUS website and send the letter I have below. I've taken the following from the HSUS email:

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As a result of HSUS's investigation at the Hallmark/Westland slaughter plant, followed by the largest ever meat recall in U.S. history, the USDA is finally considering closing a loophole in federal slaughter regulations that hurts downed cattle. If USDA's proposal moves forward, cattle who are too sick or injured even to stand or walk will no longer be slaughtered for human food, so there will be no incentive to drag them with chains, shove them by forklift, shock them, blast them with high-pressure water hoses to simulate drowning, or otherwise torment downed cattle to try to get them on their feet.

Please speak up for these crippled animals, now! Submit your comments to the USDA by September 26, 2008, to let the agency know that the public will not tolerate the cruel treatment of animals who cannot even stand or walk.

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Dear Secretary Schafer:

RE: Docket No. FSIS-2008-0022

Allowing cattle who are too sick or injured to stand or walk (known as downers) to be slaughtered subjects them to terrible suffering and threatens food safety. The USDA's proposal to close this loophole is long overdue and should be finalized immediately.

While the proposed rule is a good start, USDA should go further by:

-- expanding the downer ban to cover auction houses, markets, stockyards, and livestock haulers;

-- requiring immediate humane euthanasia of downed cattle regardless of the reason(s) an animal is non-ambulatory; and

-- applying the downer ban to pigs and other farmed animals, not just cattle.

While all downed cattle do not suffer from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or "mad cow disease"), at least 14 of the 18 confirmed cases of BSE in North America have reportedly involved downed cattle.

Downers may also be at higher risk of transmitting dangerous infections such as E. coli and Salmonella, as these animals often lie in waste and have higher levels of intestinal pathogens due to stress.

Besides the health risks, I am most concerned about the mistreatment of downers. Even after an undercover investigation revealed that downed cattle were tormented simply to get them on their feet to be slaughtered at one of the country's major suppliers to the National School Lunch Program, cattle who couldn't even stand or walk were still being abused at livestock auctions and stockyards around the country, as exposed by further investigations.

The time is now to close the loophole for all downed animals at all stages of the supply chain.