Perspective: The suffering cannot be ignored

Federal law requires slaughterhouses to render cattle and pigs insensible to pain before they are slaughtered. Yet on a daily basis, still-conscious cattle and pigs are carved, gutted and skinned by workers told not to pause for the suffering of animals that are still alive when they meet the saws and knives. "They die piece by piece," said Ramon Moreno, a worker in a Washington slaughterhouse.

In a seven-month investigation of the government meat inspection program, Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick found that slaughterhouses often fail to stun animals effectively. In one Texas plant, inspectors found nine live cattle dangling from a chain that feeds the production line. It is illegal, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture has grown lax in enforcing the law. (Part of the Post series is reprinted on the front page of this section. Be warned: It is not easy to read.)

The speed of modern slaughterhouses, which can process 400 cattle per hour, contributes to the problem. A halt in production can cost the company thousands of dollars per minute. "The line is never stopped simply because an animal is alive," said a worker for IBP Inc., the world's largest producer of beef and pork products.

Halting production is, therefore, the government's biggest threat for violators, but it is seldom used. The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service went to an industry self-inspection system in recent years and stopped tracking violations, according to the Post. Whatever gains have been made in the humane treatment of slaughterhouse animals have come from unions trying to protect their workers from dangerous conditions, animal-rights activists and the fast-food industry. After protesters picketed McDonald's, the company began annual audits of the meat plants that supply its restaurants. Yet observers believe illegal practices continue.

A moral society does not avert its eyes from the suffering of animals. President Bush and Congress should address the disturbing violations uncovered by the Post. The Department of Agriculture should no longer be allowed to ignore inhumane treatment of animals in the nation's slaughterhouses.

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