North Carolina Beef: Packingtown

If you like to eat beef (or if you love animals), you can't help but be concerned about tainted meat or the maltreatment of cows at mass-production slaughterhouses. Now this, yet another prime example of why the glorious hand of the free market is such a marvelous regulator (from the AP):

A government inspection of slaughterhouses found significant problems with the treatment of cattle and two of the nation's largest beef processors - both of which provide meat for the National School Lunch Program - were slapped with humane handling violations.

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In addition to Cargill and National Beef, the FOIA shows that the FSIS temporarily shut down Martin's Abattoir and Wholesale Meats, in Godwin, N.C., for insufficiently stunning animals, failing to make them insensible to pain on the first attempt; and issued a noncompliance order to Dakota Premium Foods in South St. Paul, Minn., for excessive bunching up of cattle going into the stunning area. Martin's Abattoir declined to comment, and Dakota Premium did not return telephone messages.

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Um, did we learn nothing from Upton Sinclair? Fortunately for us in the High Country, there is an alternative to mass beef production--right in Wilkes County--and they sell their organic beef at Earth Fare in Boone.