California plant accused of torturing unfit cows

By Russell Blinch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Humane Society of the United States said on Wednesday a California slaughterhouse was using a range of torture including "waterboarding" to prod unfit animals into the slaughterhouse so they could be processed into food that may have ended up in school lunch programs.

The Humane Society displayed a video from its own undercover, six-week investigation that it said showed abuse by workers at the Hallmark Meat Packing Co of Chino, California. However, the name of the plant was not visible in the video.

The video showed workers kicking cows, ramming them with forklift blades, applying electric shocks and even using a hose to simulate the feeling of drowning so the animals would revive long enough to pass federal inspection.

"The attempt was to make them so distressed and to cause them so much suffering that these animals would get up and walk into the slaughterhouse," Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, told reporters,

"We've heard a lot about waterboarding in 2007 as a torture technique and we saw this applied to these animals where a high pressure hose was put in the mouth and through the nose," he said, referring to a controversial technique used in the past by the CIA in its terrorism interrogation program.

The company was not immediately available for comment but said in a statement that operations had been suspended at the plant and two workers fired.

Pacelle said the plant supplies meat to the Westland Meat Co, which is the second-largest supplier of beef to the USDA Commodity Procurement Program Branch.

This branch distributes beef to needy families, the elderly and to more than 100,000 schools and child-care facilities nationwide under the national school lunch program.