The co-owner of Ranch Feeding Corporation, Jesse J. Amaral Jr. and two workers have been indicted on 11 felony counts after the huge beef recall last year. The charges include distribution of adulterated and misbranded meat, conspiracy, and mail fraud. The other co-owner of the company, Robert Singleton, is expected to be charged soon. Amaral pleaded not guilty last week and was released on bail.
Government officials believe that the owners told employees to get around inspection procedures for cows that exhibited signs of cancer of the eye. Employees then allegedly substituted cows that were not inspected for those that had already passed inspection. This apparently took place from mid to late 2012, until January 10, 2014.
The diseased cows were allegedly slaughtered and their heads deposited in a separate area known as a “gut bin”. Then heads from healthy cattle were placed next to the diseased cattle’s carcasses during federal inspector’s lunch breaks, according to the indictment. Cows are always inspected by federal workers both before and after slaughter. Employees also allegedly carved “USDA Condemned” inspection stamps from diseased carcasses and removed them.
The problems did not end there. Rancho Feeding Corporation allegedly sent letters to farms telling them that their cattle had died or been condemned, even though the employees knew that the cattle were slaughtered and sold for human consumption. The company made more money by changing farmers fees for carcass disposal instead of paying them for the cattle.
Rancho Feeding Corporation was closed in February 2014. All in all, almost 9 million pounds of beef were recalled. The signs of eye cancer, or epithelioma included lumps or other abnormalities around the eye. The beef was considered “misbranded” because “any carcass, part thereof, meat, or meat food product is misbranded if its labeling is false or misleading in any particular.”
Are these people insane or what you would put the public at risk just to make money not only should the owners go to jail but the workers that carried this atrocity out these workers don’t have friends that brought beef and what about their extended family members I mean what the —- are you saying here that every one in the slaughtering business has no respect for human life not even their own family members and if this went on with this company who’s to say its not a widespread situation in all of the slaughtering industrees these people are sick all of them from the lowest worker to the a– wholes that gave the directive to initialize this action it should be their grand kids nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles and sisters ,brothers ,mothers ,fathers that should have suffered the fate of eating that contaminated beef. P.s I don’t eat to much as its I only eat Chicken but after this I don’t know if I want that anymore only GOD knows what is going on in that industrees I am sick just thinking about people who spent big money on what they thought were great cuts of beef only to find themselves near death or dead from this atrocity.