Aberdeen beef plant cited for slaughter violations
Editor’s note: Some descriptions within the story below are graphic. Reader discretion is advised.
Despite an Aberdeen slaughterhouse’s recent history of inhumanely handling its livestock, including the fatal suffocation of several cattle, the consequences appear to be few for the company.
DemKota Ranch Beef, a large livestock facility located south of Aberdeen, was the subject of a noncompliance report filed on April 3, 2023, which the Food Safety and Inspection Service, a federal agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, included in its latest Livestock Humane Handling Inspection Task dataset released recently.
By FSIS standards, “noncompliance” indicates a facility’s failure to adhere to certain federal regulations.
For slaughter plants, this typically includes meeting the requirements of the Federal Meat Inspection Act, which require meat products to be safely and wholesomely made. These establishments must also follow the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1978, a law that requires livestock producers to minimize harm to the animals being harvested by having them stunned into unconsciousness prior to harvest.
According to the report, DemKota’s air management systems malfunctioned in the early morning hours the day of the reported incident, which led 750 cattle to experience conditions that were “humid … and hot with elevated ammonia” and “excessively foggy” to the point that visibility was poor within the facility’s barn and livestock pens.
The write-up states some of the cattle were open-mouth breathing, which is an indication of respiratory distress.
“The temperature, humidity and ammonia built up to a point where the lack of fresh air may have contributed
to four animals dying,” the report states.
The adverse conditions within the DemKota’s barn and resulting deaths have prompted the nonprofit animal rights advocacy group PETA, or the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, to request the Brown County State Attorney Office to pursue a criminal probe against the Aberdeen slaughterhouse.
“These conditions do not represent an otherwise-exempt usual and customary practice of the livestock industry or the slaughter of animals for food,” PETA Vice President of Evidence Analysis Daniel Paden wrote in an e-mail on Oct. 31 to Brown County State’s Attorney Karly Winter. “This incident thus appears to violate SDCL § 40-1-2.3, which bars anyone responsible for the care of animals from failing to provide them with ‘adequate facilities, or care generally considered to be standard and accepted for an animal’s health and well-being.’”
Brown County State’s Attorney Office didn’t not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding PETA’s letter, but the office previously told the local news outlet Aberdeen Insider the incident is being “looked into.”
DemKota cattle deaths come after multiple humane handling violations since October 2022
While the deaths of four cattle might appear to be a one-off accident at DemKota Ranch Beef, an Argus Leader investigation found the facility has a recent history of inadequate livestock handling practices.
According to FSIS’ data, federal inspectors filed five other noncompliance reports between October 2022 and May 2023.
On Nov. 17, 2022, Jan. 10 and Jan. 13, DemKota employees were found to be shackling cattle prior to stunning, which is a violation of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act.
Federal code requires cattle and other livestock to first be “rendered insensible to pain” — stunned to the point of instantaneous unconsciousness through a single concussive blow, gunshot or other means — before shackling them as part of the slaughter process.
While the cows did not struggle or vocalize discomfort as they were shackled in any of the three reports, the improper shackling of cattle could have excited the animals or exposed them to discomfort or accidental injury prior to slaughter.
DemKota utilizes a Robust Systematic Approach, or RSA, which is a set of procedures developed by slaughter plants to ensure employees are following humane handling and slaughter practices. When a company has an RSA on the books, FSIS takes this into consideration whenever an “egregious” humane handling violation occurs at a livestock-raising facility.
FSIS breaks down humane handling rule-breaking into two categories: “egregious” and “non-egregious.” “Non-egregious” humane handling violations usually consist of harvest line mistakes that may expose animals to discomfort but the establishment takes an immediate and effective correction action to remedy the issue.
“Egregious” humane handling violations, however, are instances of improper animal handling considered so flagrant and serious, and the proposed remedy is either ineffective or delayed, that a plant inspector must take control of the situation. This also often results in FSIS temporarily suspending inspection services at the offending facility, which penalizes the company by preventing the sale of their meat products.
DemKota had one such egregious incident on March 2, when a cow that was stunned in preparation for slaughter regained consciousness after it had already been shackled and hoisted onto a “sticking platform” — an area of a slaughter facility where incapacitated cows are hung by their legs and have their major arteries slashed to ensure a quick death for the animal.
However, because the animal’s consciousness returned before the “sticker” — the industry term for those who handling the bleeding of the cattle — could continue the slaughter process, DemKota became noncompliant with federal regulations.
At that point, the sticker began trying to hold the cow, which was trying to right itself while hanging by its leg on a moving production line, and the employee who provided the initial stun was called over to subdue the animal. The two employees were unsuccessful in restraining the struggling cow, and a second sticker grabbed the animal by the ears to apply a secondary stun “but could not hold the animal still enough,” the report reads.
The three employees eventually managed to provide a secondary stun to the animal to render it unconscious after a plant inspector told the crew to stop the production line.
FSIS deemed this an egregious humane handling violation, in part due to the unsuccessful intervention by the three DemKota employees, prompting the agency’s Des Moines District Office on March 8 to send the Aberdeen company a Notice of Intended Enforcement.
These notices are considered official actions by FSIS to bring offending businesses under regulatory compliance by requiring plant management to create an action plan to prevent future violations or else suspend inspection services at their facilities. This type of enforcement is one step below immediate suspension of services — facilities with RSAs, like DemKota, are often given some leeway just for having an RSA.
What makes DemKota’s situation unique, however, is that the employee who failed to adequately stun the cow during the March 2 incident was an uncertified trainee.
Records show that this same unnamed employee was also cited in an FSIS report issued just one day before the egregious violation, in which the trainee was performing stunning duties unsupervised.
The March 2 report determined livestock stunned by the uncertified employee showed evidence of having been stunned twice before shackling and hosting.
FSIS’ regulations require to stunners to incapacitate cattle with a single, effective blow.
While FSIS observed the untrained ranch hand’s first stuns had done just that, the March 2 report still took issue with DemKota’s standards: “Review of recent previous [reports] issued [March 1] discussed concerns regarding the potential of improper stuns due to the employee’s lack of supervision.”
“There’s a lack of training, I think, particularly in facilities that are using gun shot,” Paden told Argus Leader in a Monday interview. “I think a lot of workers, unfortunately, are just handed a rifle and expected to know where to aim it. A lack of restraint also leads to a lot of these botched stunts.”
But by March 8, DemKota’s pending suspension was deferred — the looming penalties were not applied — which essentially meant FSIS would be giving the Aberdeen slaughter plant a slap on the wrist, so long as the company remained in compliance with the regulations it ignored.
FSIS did not reinstate DemKota’s pending suspension after company failed to follow federal regulations, records show
It only took one day for DemKota to nearly violate what was effectively a probation period for leaving uncertified employees unsupervised.
On March 9, DemKota placed the same trainee, who was now undergoing a “3-day hands on [sic] training period,” on the slaughter line as a “knocker,” otherwise known as stun duty.
“I asked [DemKota management] isn’t [the trainee] supposed to have a trainer observe his knocks, as described in the establishment corrective action response to the NOIE,” the FSIS inspector’s March 9 report read. “She immediately stopped operations and called for Harvest General Foreman … to the Restrainer Area. When he arrived, he agreed that [the trainee] was still in training and moved [another employee] to stunning.”
And again, on March 22, a plant inspector was present at the Aberdeen facility to observe another trainee operating a pneumatic stunner.
According to the inspector, FSIS and DemKota management worked out a verification plan as part of the March 8 deferral, in which new employees would be supervised with “a certified stunner standing directly beside them.”
DemKota delegated a certified stunner to observe the trainee’s stunning attempts, the March 22 FSIS report read, but the trainer was located in the corner of the room where the slaughter process was taking place.
“[The certified stunner] verbally replied that he could see from the corner [of the room],” the inspector’s report read. “While standing there I could not observed [sic] the knocks accurately because of the barrel fan and the knocking employee w[as] in the way of me observing the knock placement.”
FSIS’ report on the matter referred to this as a “failure to follow the verification plan.” DemKota’s deferral letter indicates that failure to implement said verification plan or to comply with federal regulations could result in the reinstatement of their pending suspension or other appropriate enforcement actions.
Yet despite DemKota’s failure to follow their own action plan, and the following April 3 malfunction that led to the death of their own cattle, federal regulators did not pursue further action against the company.
“You have slaughterhouses where every two to three months, it’s the same thing,” Paden said. “There’s a problem, a day passes. They submit their remedial actions and the USDA says ‘Great, back to business,’ and it just goes on and on to infinity with no meaningful change. There’s no incentive or motivation for a slaughterhouse to really shake things up, because they know that, at the end of the day, no one’s going to file charges against them.”
DemKota Ranch Beef was not immediately available for comment.