What is everyone's take on the Central Valley meat Slaughterplant being shutdown?

[Travis1981]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRS-kz...

I think we need to know where our food comes from and how it is treated throughout it's entire life. Makes me think twice about IN and Out and Costco.

[latindancer]

At this point I'm a little more concerned about the trucks transporting the products to the place(s) I'm purchasing my food items. I've been reading and hearing reports this summer their refrigeration is at very high unacceptable temperature levels.
Frightening.

[Will Owen]

After having read Foer's "Eating Animals" I'm pretty sure that if every such plant had a similarly effective whistle-blower we carnivores would be scrambling for imported stuff for a while until all those slaughterhouses could clean up their acts and be back in business. There's a good reason that non-official outsiders are never allowed to observe the slaughter process, and it's not the offered one that they don't want to "upset" us by the necessarily nasty things we'd see. I was very deeply upset indeed at learning that pigs and chickens are the two most routinely mistreated animals, since those and fish are what I eat most of. Cattle are treated badly in the slaughterhouse, but pigs and chickens suffer from birth.

I'm glad to see that the exposure seems to have done its job so far. The truth is that the government simply can't afford to have enough inspectors, and in fact the meat packers have won concessions compromising the inspectors' ability to inspect. Where the hell is Teddy Roosevelt when we need him?

[Veggo]

The alternative is we would pay twice the price to eat critters that died with a smile. No easy answers.

[Will Owen]

I am paying sometimes not quite twice the price, sometimes more, and glad to do it. My take on the book was that I should try to patronize those who least commodifed the animals. Mrs. O's take was that she should stop eating them. As I'm the cook, this means I'm cooking and eating mostly vegetarian, with meat sometimes for lunch or when she dines with her school chums. Our aggregate grocery bill has diminished by almost a third. Even the best pork chops are cheap, but beans and tofu are a whole lot cheaper.

[todao]

I don't know of any major food retailer that takes the time to visit every one of their supplier's facilities and I don't expect them to. They're concerned with the safety of the products delivered to them and rely on USDA rules and regs. (naive perhaps, but if you can't rely on your government then who can you rely on :>}) I would expect them to disconnect with any supplier exposed as those in the video were exposed and they've taken steps to do that.
Your local supermarket is no less culpable than Costco or In and Out Burger so let's not lean on one part of the industry while closing our eyes to the others.