Vet’s Testimony on Oversight Sheds New Light on Beef E. coli
Years of ground beef E. coli outbreaks will be put in new light today by a slaughterhouse veterinarian’s testimony that supervisors shelved citations written by front-line government safety personnel for dangerous and cruel practices.
The vet says writers of citations were threatened with transfers. It is easy to imagine in the culture he describes that inspectors might have looked the other way at ground beef E. coli risks to stay out of trouble with supervisors in order to keep their jobs.
The whistleblower is Dean Wyatt, a supervisory veterinarian at the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the agency responsible for keeping E. coli O157:H7 and other potentially deadly pathogens out of our meat supply. According to USA Today reporter Peter Eisler, who obtained an advance copy of the testimony, Wyatt is to appear before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in Washington.
Wyatt witnessed practices as an FSIS vet that would increase the risk of E. coli O157:H7 contamination. For instance, he found downed calves being dragged through pens to slaughter — a violation because contact with feces can contaminate animals.
The abuse occurred at Bushway Packing Inc. in Grand Isle, Vermont. Wyatt says he ordered suspensions in operations three times at Bushway in 2008 and early 2009 but managers overruled him and allowed the plant to keep running.
Bushway subsequently made headlines last fall when the Humane Society of the United States filmed undercover video of workers hitting and using electric prods to move calves. The plant was shut down. USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack ordered a criminal investigation.
Wyatt also says superiors dismissed violations he reported in 2007 and 2008 at a Seaboard Foods pork plant in Guymon, Oklahoma. He cited the plant for slaughtering conscious pigs, beating pigs and trampling of pigs, USA Today is reporting.
Wyatt’s experiences “illustrate a pattern that FSIS is broken and must be fixed,” Amanda Hitt of the Government Accountability Project, told USA Today. USDA spokesman Caleb Weaver told the newspaper that inaction on Wyatt’s reports occurred before the tenure of Vilsack, who is “fully committed” to enforcing safe and humane slaughtering rules.
