Uninspected poultry sold in supermarkets

From the NY Times:

A Queens slaughterhouse that had been selling thousands of pounds of uninspected poultry to local supermarkets has been enjoined from the practice by a court-approved decree announced Tuesday by federal prosecutors.

Inspectors from the Department of Agriculture discovered that the slaughterhouse, 44th Avenue Halal Poultry Corporation in Corona, which operates under an exemption to federal inspection laws that allows for the sale of uninspected poultry to individuals for at-home consumption, had been selling mass quantities of poultry directly to retailers.

The government filed suit against the company and its president, Hakim Abdul Mazumder, in April.

If Mr. Mazumder violates the decree, he will be subject to a series of escalating fines and the termination of the company’s exemption from the Poultry Products Inspection Act, the federal law that governs the inspections.

I'd totally buy a chicken from there. NOT.

Bull runs amok in Jamaica

From Fox 5:

A bull or steer that apparently wasn't too keen to be led to slaughter broke free and caused quite a scene in Queens on Wednesday.

It was videotaped charging down Liberty Ave. in Jamaica, Queens. Pedestrians were walking down the sidewalks, unaware, as the animal raced by. A school bus was seen following the bovine down the street.

Later, the animal showed up on the campus of York College campus of the City University of New York, which is further down Liberty Ave. It tried to run into one of the buildings at the health and physical education complex the but ended up hitting construction scaffolding that was set up around the buildings.

A student emailed video of the scene to MyFoxNY.com

Two men, one still wearing a slaughterhouse cover-up, were finally able to wrestle the animal to the ground before any more damage was done.

No injuries were reported.

College Point pig heads for greener pastures

From the Daily News:

A friendly, 58-pound pig - plucked off a Queens street on Father's Day - is heading to greener pastures.

The stray swine, named Wilbur by the city's Animal Care & Control staff, was found wandering around 31st Ave. and College Point Blvd. in College Point.

Police easily corralled the porky pedestrian into a carrier and brought him to ACC's Manhattan shelter.

"The pig cooperated," said ACC spokesman Richard Gentles. "He was unharmed and uninjured, but he was dirty and smelled like grease and oil."

While uncommon, it's not unheard of for cops and animal control officers to wrangle sheep, cows, goats and other unusual critters off city streets. Some are escapees from livestock markets while others are pets.

Gentles said Wilbur won't find his way on to someone's dinner plate. Instead, he is going to live at a sanctuary outside the city.

Also, the Queens County Farm Museum has stopped selling pork.

Ozone Park slaughterhouse's multimillion dollar expansion

From the Daily News:

A father-and-son business is on track to become Queens' third federally approved slaughterhouse, once the $5 million Ozone Park facility is completed next month.

Madani Halal is waiting for one last piece of custom-built equipment to arrive to cap a five-year expansion project that transformed a neighboring auto-body shop into a state-of-the-art halal slaughterhouse.

The new facility will allow the business to tap into the growing demand for halal products, owners said.

His customers choose from exotic chickens and ducks, along with uncommon birds like guinea hens, partridges and squab raised in Pennsylvania. Imran Uddin said they are free of hormones. The animals are killed humanely on the premises, following Muslim law, and drained of blood.

Halal is "an ancient tradition. However, it's new here - especially in New York City," the younger Uddin said. "Most people associate it with the food carts they see all over the city."

There are about 200 slaughterhouses in New York City, but only seven are federally inspected. Seven more, not including Madani, have applied for USDA approval this year, federal agriculture officials said.

What the hell is SCA thinking?

From the Times Ledger:

Corona desperately needs another school, residents and members of Community Board 4 agreed, but they balked Tuesday night at the city’s plan to put it next to a firehouse, on a street with no sidewalks and on a property that would force out a local business that has been there for 28 years.

CB 4 voted almost unanimously against the proposal for the 612-seat K-8 school the School Construction Authority hopes to build at 97-36 43rd Ave. on a 40,000-square-foot, L-shaped lot that abuts both 44th and 43rd avenues.

Police Officer Jeanine Rivera of the 110th Precinct also warned that constructing a school on 43rd Avenue could pose a safety risk for squad cars, which often use the street as a main conduit from the precinct house to the rest of the neighborhood.

Rivera also pointed out the fact that the school would be located closer to a chicken slaughterhouse than the station house, where, “spring summer and fall, the smell out of there is ridiculous.”

ESDC gave $1.62M in taxpayer money to shady kosher slaughterhouse

From the Huffington Post:

I won't get into the details of the conditions at New Square Meats; if you're reading this, odds are you likely have a sense of what they might have involved. One of the basic, primary laws of Kashrut implies cleanliness: there is no eating of bottom-feeders, no partaking of animals that chew their cud and don't have cloven hoofs, no noshing on beasts that wallow in mud baths. Animals under the laws of Kashrut also may not be slaughtered if they are unconscious; among the supposed health benefits of this practice (like it or hate it) is the elimination of potentially sick and/or infectious animals from getting into the food supply. Theoretically.

So how could New Square Meats, which is itself affiliated with the Skver Hasidim--a sect that has repeatedly run afoul of the law--so obviously flout not only the religious dietary laws that they are supposed to be adhering to, but government regulations as well?

First, take religion completely out of the equation (since they've already blown a big fat Bronx cheer in the face of kashrut).

The answer?
Logrolling.

New Square Meats recently received a $1.62 million grant from New York's Empire State Development Corporation to help subsidize the cost of building a new, larger slaughterhouse near the one that has just been shut down; they received the money without obtaining the approvals from local town and county planning departments:

As the Forward reported recently, the slaughterhouse, New Square Meats, was already under fire for its attempt to build a bigger plant, five times the size of its current one, close to New Square's border with the town of New Hempstead. The proposed 26,250 square foot slaughterhouse would cost $3 million. Some local officials were particularly upset by the fact that New Square Meats had received a $1.62 million grant from New York's Empire State Development Corporation to help subsidize the new building without getting approval first from the county- or town-planning departments.

What is clear is that where New Square is concerned, the government--at least at the state level--has simply looked the other way for almost an entire decade; the New Square slaughterhouse that was just shut down had been selling uninspected birds since 2002.

Another public authority. Another horrible waste of taxpayer money.

WE NEED THE FEDS!

Have a little crap with your chicken!

From Eyewitness News:

For obvious reasons, there are strict standards for federal inspection of poultry that ends up in food stores. We received a tip that birds being sold out of a busy poultry plant in Corona, Queens may be a food disaster waiting in the wings. So we went undercover.

What we found at local neighborhood grocery stores is enough to make you sick.

Vibrant and diverse at the slaughterhouse

From the NY Times:

There are about 90 live-poultry markets in the metropolitan area. That number has doubled since the mid-1990s, state officials say, because of the demands of immigrants from countries where eyeballing your meat while it is alive is considered common sense. About a quarter of the markets are also licensed to slaughter larger livestock.

Perhaps inevitably, when it comes to killing animals for food, immigrant Queens clashes with suburban-homeowning Queens: Some of the people who worry about factory-produced meat are unenthusiastic about having mom-and-pop abattoirs next door.

Last year, residents of St. Albans, Queens, blocked a small slaughterhouse from opening on Farmers Boulevard. One resident, Marie Wilkerson, told The New York Times that she feared its stink would ruin backyard barbecues. Their state legislators pushed through a law barring new slaughterhouses within 1,500 feet of a residence for four years, effectively freezing the expansion of slaughterhouses in most of the city.

It's funny how the city government thinks it is acceptable to have these places within steps of people's homes. From a city planning standpoint, this is just bad. The smell that emanates from these places is vomit-inducing and should not be allowed anywhere near residences. And someone needs to educate newcomers that just because an animal "looks" healthy doesn't mean it is. Especially when you read a line like this:

"More-established market owners say that some new businesses skirt the rules or do not understand them."

Cops catch Queens cow

From NY Magazine:

The cow that escaped from a slaughterhouse in Jamaica, Queens today is the new feel-good heroine of 2009! Though little is known about the cow, or her motivations (Was she taking a stand against industrial production? Trying to get a little fresh air? Or simply trying to avoid her own gruesome fate?), we are happy to report that we just spoke to an officer at Police Precinct 103, who informed us that although the cow was corralled and captured by an elite team of officers, she is currently being delivered to the ASPCA and not back to the slaughterhouse. "We always think that once they've escaped, they've earned the right to go free," a police spokeswoman, who wished to remain nameless, told us.

Urban planning at its finest, part 9

Luxury condo next door to slaughterhouse!

I'll let Miss Heather explain the rest.

Forest Hills chicken slaughter raises ethical questions

Hi Crappy, I don't know if this falls under your purview but it's really disturbing and apparently goes on more and more in Forest Hills.

It takes place for one awful night each year, and is a horrible thing that the 112th Precinct sanctions. It's basically a yearly outdoor chicken slaughter that takes place until all hours of the night at various super-orthodox synagogues. This year among other places it happened at Sephardic Jewish Congregation & Center of Queens until almost 2 am. The police said it was allowed since it was "religious." The chickens squawking and people yelling were truly disturbing. I thought this only went on in Crown heights. - anonymous

PETA letters against chicken slaughter

St. Albans victorious over slaughterhouse

A St. Albans community declared victory this week over a plan to open a slaughterhouse on Farmers Blvd. after months of protest and a reprieve from Albany.

The R & B Live Poultry Market, just off Merrick Blvd., was set to move into the neighborhood of mostly one- and two-family homes, setting off a wave of rallies, court actions and lobbying among concerned locals.

As workers prepared the market for opening this summer, Joan Flowers, a local Democratic district leader and a lawyer, got a court order stopping the city from issuing a certificate of occupancy.

Then Gov. Paterson approved a new law last week preventing the state commissioner of agriculture and markets from licensing live animal slaughterhouses within 1,500 feet of homes in the city.

"I was outraged but I didn't know if we would win - but we did win," Assemblyman William Scarborough (D-St. Albans) said Monday at a "victory" gathering in his Merrick Blvd. office.

St. Albans neighborhood blocks slaughterhouse plan

City planning at its smartest

Elmer Blackburne, a goateed 73-year-old, unfolded a battered card table on the sidewalk in front of the building’s propped-open door, and laid his megaphone on top of it. A worker in blue coveralls poked out his head, and then the door jerked closed.

So it has gone for the last few Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, when the neighbors have gathered to picket the site of a former auto repair shop that will be R & B Live Poultry, once renovations inside are completed. Neighbors have filed a lawsuit to stop the project.

The sign on the building’s exterior, decorated with photographs of various animals, says that R & B will sell “chicken, fowl, rooster, guinea hen, goat, sheep, lamb.” The signs in the pickets’ hands read, “Stop the Slaughterhouse” and “No Animal Markets Next to Homes.”

For weeks, neighbors have been protesting the arrival of the slaughterhouse, saying that it will breed disease, produce noxious smells and torment asthma sufferers with clouds of chicken feathers.

On the Edge of a Residential Strip, Fear of Feathers

According to federal and state officials, the city is home to about 90 slaughterhouses, and this is not the first time the arrival of such a business has alarmed its prospective neighbors. A bill that has already passed the State Senate and is awaiting action by the Assembly would prohibit slaughterhouses in New York City within 1,500 feet of a residential building. However, such legislation would probably not affect existing businesses like R & B.

A stinky proposition

A plan to open a meat market that would slaughter animals on site - including goats, lambs, ducks and chickens - has its St.Albans neighbors crying foul.

"This is not something that we need. There are a lot of kids, and you have to worry about bacteria or a flu coming from these animals," said Antoinette Grant, whose home sits just behind the planned site of R & B Live Poultry Market on Farmers Blvd.

St. Albans tries to kill live meat market

The smell is awesome as well. Just think what this would do to property values! [Flashback to "Which Came First, the Chicken or the Crap?"]

Come on, it's places like this that add an extra special vibrancy to Queens. If we don't allow this kind of thing in the middle of a residential area, then where will the 6 o'clock news get footage of yet another cow getting loose, running down the street and being captured by the NYPD? How will the Queens Zoo manage to look heroic without stray "almost dinner" to take in?

Which came first - the chicken or the crap?

Right across the street from the elegance at Flushing Meadows Corona Park you will find these dream homes on 46th Ave just off 111th St...

Here you can see the three stages of Queens Crap. To the left, 8 units of crap (and 2 "medical offices") under construction. To the right, you have 15 units of completed crap. The little white shack in the middle is almost certainly crap-to-be.

But living on this block has a bonus - what is in that little white shack, you may ask? LIVE POULTRY! Ever catch a whiff of one of these places on a hot summer day?