Horse Meat Applicant’s Food Safety Is Questioned
Published:
March 13, 2013
The New Mexico company
seeking to become the first slaughter house for horses in the United States
since 2007 drew complaints over a two-year period from federal food safety inspectors and state
regulatory authorities over its disposal of animal remains when it processed
cattle for beef.
Troy
Grant/New Mexico Solid Waste Bureau
Cattle waste from Valley Meat in
Roswell, N.M., whose owners have applied to become a horse meat slaughtering
facility.
The complaints raise questions about
whether the Agriculture Department, which oversees meat processing, will
approve the company’s application. Under the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the
grounds around a meat processing plant “must be maintained to prevent
conditions that could lead to insanitary conditions, adulteration of product,
or interfere with inspection.”
Catherine Cochran, a spokeswoman for
the U.S.D.A., said
the department cannot comment on pending applications.
The complaints included a 2010
letter to state health officials from an Agriculture Department inspector
reporting that piles of animal remains were as high as 15 feet high along the
back property line of the plant. “I am told that during fly season the pile
literally moves due to maggots,” wrote Ron C. Nelson, the district manager for
the department’s Food Safety Inspection Service in Denver, who took pictures of
what he saw.
A. Blair Dunn, a lawyer for the
company, Valley Meat, said many of the complaints, documented in e-mails and
letters obtained by Front Range Equine Rescue, an advocacy
group that opposes horse slaughter, were false.
“These groups have been saying all
of these horrible things about my clients, and none of it was ever true,” Mr.
Dunn said. “If you’re trying to make a point and keep something from opening,
you have to be a little sensational.”
He said the owners of the company in
Roswell, N.M., Sarah and Ricardo de los Santos, had
been struggling financially because of the sharp drop in beef cattle prices
over the last three years and could not afford to have the compost and other
waste hauled from the facility. In an e-mail, Mr. Dunn said there were never
any environmental concerns or health hazards at the site.
However, Auralie
Ashley-Marx, chief of the solid waste bureau of the New Mexico Environment
Department, called Mr. Dunn’s assessment “factually inaccurate,” saying that
after three inspections of the site in 2010, the department had issued a
“notice of violation” listing Valley Meat’s failure to register as a composting
facility and to properly dispose of waste, as well as the improper composting
of offal.
Valley Meat’s application to begin
slaughtering horses for human consumption, has created a furor. Horse
slaughtering was effectively banned in the United States until 2011, when
language prohibiting the financing of inspections of horse meat facilities fell
out of an appropriations bill.
Since then, the U.S.D.A. has
received applications from six companies seeking permission to start
slaughtering horses, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act by Bruce A. Wagman, a lawyer for
Front Range. In addition to Valley Meat, facilities in Iowa, Oklahoma,
Tennessee and Rockville and Gallatin, Mo., have sought U.S.D.A. approval, Mr. Wagman said.
On Wednesday, Senator Mary Landrieu,
Democrat of Louisiana; Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina;
Representative Patrick Meehan, Republican of Pennsylvania; and Representative
Jan Schakowsky Democrat of Illinois, introduced a bill to prohibit horse
slaughter for human consumption and forbid the transport of horses across the
border for slaughter in other countries.
The recent uproar over horse meat
began in Europe earlier this year when trace amounts were found in products
labeled 100 percent beef. Major food companies and restaurant
chains, like Nestlé and Taco Bell, pulled products off shelves and tables in 14
countries.
In describing the series of events
involving Valley Meat, Ms. Ashley-Marx said her department’s inspections were
prompted by the letter Dr. Nelson of the inspection service sent to the New
Mexico health department on Jan. 22, 2010, after a visit he had made to the
plant earlier that month.
“Approximately 200 yards behind the
facility, Mr. de los Santos drags dead cattle (mostly old dairy cows) and piles
them on a concrete pad where he leaves them to rot,” Dr. Nelson wrote. “He
calls it composting, but by all appearances rotting would be more accurate.”
Dr. Nelson, who is a veterinarian,
said his concern was that materials that could cause bovine spongiform
encephalopathy, known commonly as mad cow disease,
could find their way into the soil and feed.
Mr. Dunn disputed Dr. Nelson’s
findings, saying, “Let’s get the facts straight — there never was this mountain
of dead, rotting animals.” He added that his clients had been working with
state officials to remove the remains.
Ms. Ashley-Marx said she had not
seen any carcasses, either, when she and a colleague visited the site about
four months after Dr. Nelson wrote his letter. But she said the agency had
identified other problems. The company did not have state permission to compost
its waste materials and did not know how to properly compost animal tissue, a
method called mortality composting.
Wrangling between the company and
state and federal officials over permits and proper waste disposal of animal
carcasses continued until last August, when New Mexico officials fined Valley
Meat $86,400, the maximum penalty it can impose. The fine was later reduced to
$5,000, after the company attracted new investors who helped it pay to clear
the animal compost piles off its site.
Mr. Dunn blamed New Mexico Gov.
Susana Martinez’s opposition to horse slaughter for
some of his client’s problems. “Everything was moving along just fine until she
got involved, and now it’s all become political,” he said.
Jim Winchester, a spokesman for the
Environment Department, denied political influence had any bearing on the
state’s actions against Valley Meat.
This article has been revised to
reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 14, 2013
An earlier version of this article
misstated the formal name of the disease commonly known as mad cow disease. It
is bovine spongiform encephalopathy, not encephalitis.