Meat: An ugly reality show

SO IT'S official: Downers - cows too sick to stand, the ones at highest risk for mad cow disease - were indeed getting into the food supply and being fed to our nation's children in the school lunch program.

Steve Mendell, CEO of the meat plant made infamous by undercover Humane Society video footage, said so himself on Wednesday while testifying before Congress.

Hours before, Mendell had submitted written testimony saying the cows seen being tormented by his workers were euthanized and "not put into commerce." But a House subcommittee made him watch all the videos. "With his head in hand at times," the Associated Press reported, he watched "cows dragged by chains, jabbed by forklifts and shocked - methods to get them into position to be slaughtered," including footage of at least two in the "kill chute."

Mendell retracted his previous denial. Yes, downers had been slaughtered for food. "I was shocked, I was horrified and I was sickened" by the video, he said. He had earlier called it "impossible" that cows were shocked.

If we're to believe him, Mendell was living in a rose-colored bubble where workers obeyed all the rules and showed consideration for animals and consumers alike. On Wednesday, the brutality for which he was ultimately responsible became undeniable - his bubble was burst.

It may soon burst for many of America's meat-eating public. After all, the Humane Society picked his plant at random. So it's simply a fantastic coincidence that it happened to be the one place in the country where dangerous, illegal torture of animals is happening? If you believe that, I have 143 million pounds of beef for you to purchase.

The USDA certainly wants you to believe it: The biggest meat scandal in years, it says, is a classic "isolated incident" - there's no reason to lose faith in factory-farmed meat. But there are big problems with USDA's credibility. For one thing, since the regulators, like Mendell, were utterly unaware of the illegal activities at this one plant, how can they speak with any confidence about what's going on anywhere else?

More important, the USDA is far from objective about meat. For example, the agency was found to have broken the law by hiding conflicts of interest and financial ties to the meat and dairy industry among most of its dietary guidelines panel. Like Mendell, and consumers, these officials desperately want to believe their favorite product is safe and aboveboard.

But food safety is just part of the bubble - health-conscious consumers would already have dumped red meat once it was definitively linked to various cancers in 2007. The point is that plausible deniability is over: Meat is treated badly both before and after slaughter, as are consumers.

Investigations by the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, for instance, have shown that unspeakable cruelty in large-scale slaughter plants is common. Beef and pork are infused with carbon monoxide to mask their gray-brown color, and a favored corrective to the coming spike in E. coli cases (projected by the American Meat Institute's Randy Huffman) is to irradiate the meat, killing any fecal bacteria remaining.

Now, it's up to you whether such a system of profit-based shenanigans, once shrouded but now crystal clear, should get your continued support. With attention to the facts, though, I think a sense of fair play and logic will win out. Most consumers don't want their hard-earned consumer dollars to fund this kind of abuse.

There's a holiday coming up March 20: The Great American Meatout. It's a chance to step back and look at what you believe and vote your conscience when you sit down at the table.

At the very least you may want to restrict your meat purchases to sources you know personally. If ignorance is bliss, it's also just about impossible now.

The reality of factory-farming animal abuse is clear. It's a toss-up whether animal cruelty being ignored and denied or the rise in food-borne diseases like E. coli is a bigger problem.

Either way: Let's open our eyes, and cut the crap. *

Vance Lehmkuhl is the online editor of the Daily News.