Mad about Meat

I just found an interesting article today about Rancho Feeding Corp, a company that is responsible for supplying beef to places like Kroger and Walmart.

Why is everything at Walmart so cheap? Because they keep forcing their suppliers to reduce the cost of their product. How do they do that? Buy cheaper, diseased cattle and sneak them in while USDA inspectors are on break for lunch.

http://news.yahoo.com/indictments-slaughterhouse-charged-selling-cancerous-153503792.html

Some text from the aforementioned article:

The co-owner of a slaughterhouse in California has been indicted by a federal grand jury for processing and distributing cattle known to have eye cancer. According to the indictment (below), Rancho Feeding Corporation's co-owner Jesse Amaral Jr. and two of his employees Eugene Corda and Felix Cabrera knowingly purchased cattle that showed signs of eye cancer because it was cheaper. To deceive regulators, they would decapitate the sick cows and move the bodies up the inspection line next to healthy cattle heads. They would make the switch when the inspectors were on lunch breaks.

The Chicago Tribune writes that in 2012 Amaral Jr. apparently told employees to process cattle that had been "condemned by federal inspectors." Workers were asked to carve the "USDA Condemned stamps out of the carcasses." The indictment points out that between January 2013 and January 2014, Rancho Feed Corp. "processed and distributed for human consumption carcasses, carcass parts, and meat from approximately 101 condemned cattle and approximately 79 cancer eye cows."

Yet another reason to buy local products from reputable people you can trust. I really think these guys should get a much more severe sentence than they typically get. If you intentionally mess with the food people eat or the drugs they take to fix their illnesses, you should go away for a very long time, long enough for people to think twice about earning an extra $50 bucks in that paycheck.