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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Efforts to Close “Painful” Loophole in Animal Slaughter Regs

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Friday, May 16, 2014   

LANSING, Mich. – Some see it as a painful loophole in animal slaughter regulations.

It affects so-called downer calves – cattle that are on the ground and can't get up.

Paul Shapiro, vice president for Farm Animal Protection with the Humane Society of the United States, says federal law currently prohibits the slaughter for food of adult cattle that are too sick, injured or weak to stand on their own.

But a loophole in the law does not protect younger, veal calves in the same situations.

"There needs to be a federal rule that would ensure that slaughter plants across the country are operating by some very basic rules of the road that are designed to prevent torture of animals," Shapiro says.

Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin of Michigan are among a dozen U.S. senators calling on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to close the loophole and prevent the slaughter of downer calves for food.

Shapiro says his group in undercover investigations recently documented inhumane treatment of downer calves.

One documented conditions at a veal slaughter plant in Shrewsbury, New Jersey.

"And what we documented on hidden camera were animals who were too sick or injured or tired, even to stand up and walk to their own slaughter,” Shapiro says, “being dragged with chains, being prodded.

“It was a real house of horrors for these calves."

Shapiro says the senators have pointed out in a joint letter to the USDA that it has been four years since the Humane Society requested what the it believes is common sense legislation, but to date, the USDA has not even offered a proposed rule.




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