ORIGINAL: Mr.G

Ok - wasnt gonna reply but here goes. What does everyone think is going to happen in a slaughterhouse? Look at the name....sound like a good place for a family vacation - i dont think so. The video link posted was not a video of a "slaughterhouse" it was a video of a small butcher shop. If that had been a slaughterous, the animal would have been stunned, stuck, and all the blood drained from the body in the time it took that guy to stun the animal. Why stun instead of shoot? Stunning uses the body's natural blood pump, the heart, and removes the blood from the actual cuts of meat, allowing a better product for the consumer in the end.

Ahh, the hormone debate. As a beef producer, Bachelor of Science in Animal Science and a consumer of copious amounts of this "pumped" meat - I assure you that, just as roundup ready technology has not affected the end product in the corn and soybean industry, so will the use of implants in cattle not affect the end product of your steak.

I assure you - the cattle industry as a whole is the most regulated group in the meat production industry. No flavor enhancers are allowed to be used, no water is allowed to be added, look at the poultry and pork industries and their end product. Lots of water - wonder why its cheaper? Ill sell you water for a buck or so a pound if you want me to and that is exactly what the pork and poultry industries do and are allowed to do.

In summary - could things be changed some in the beef packing industry? Im sure there are some places that could be, but currently food safety is at an all time high. Evisceration, splitting, primal separating, quality grading, packaging etc are all done in a very sterile environment and inspection in plants is quite good and highly regulated.

Could the stunning aspect be changed? I encourage any of you that think so invent your own process that will quickly and humanely allow the volume of animals that are needed to be slaughtered each week to be slaughtered. Until then - this is the best we've got.