Now this story is on Yahoo's home page. Recall of 143 million pounds of beef.
If this for real? Food is already so expensive that, although I wouldn't care if all meat was put on hold, won't this affect the price in the future?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080218/ap_on_bi_ge/slaughterhouse_abuse

That's nothing compared to the consumption of the whole nation. I think the last estimate was 5 billion pounds of beef consumption every hour, just in the U.S alone.
S0 143 million is nothing.

Nanc - i can live nicely without beef.

It will affect the price of meat.
These cattle were what they call downed cows. Could be caused by anything from fatigue to disease.
I worked in meat processing at one time.
At that meat processing plant where this has taken place there should have been federal meat inspectors on duty. They should have been aware of what was going on.
Cattle going into a meat processing plant is only going to end up one way.
Processed for human consumption or sent of to the dog food factory.

I should check before I copy & paste a quote. Lots of errors.   Geesh!
Anyway, I agree it will increase the price of meat.
Everything is going up in price. Tonight I wasn't very hungry and, after buying my Fantasy5 ticket, went to the pasta section which is usually the cheap aisle. You know those Lipton side dishes for rice and pasta? Last year they were 99 cts. This week the price is $1.53. Same with Pasta Roni which just 2 years ago was 99 cts.   Doesn't sound like much, but that's a 50% increase.

Like Emily, I can live without beef. Running a forklift into a living creature is cruel and unacceptable. On the one hand, since so many people reply on these houses or horror for their income, I hate to see people losing their jobs. On the other hand, it would be nice if all animals were treated with some humanity. They were being tortured.

Saw the video on TV the other night and it was very disturbing. I am not against killing animals for food, as I grew up on a farm and saw cattle and other animals slaughtered. But...... thankfully I never saw animals treated cruelly like that, and I have to wonder just what the people doing those things were actually thinking. Or I suppose, they were not thinking at all.

BTW, you all haven't seen anything yet regarding prices for food, especially meat and dairy. Now that we are growing corn for gasoline (ethanol), farmers have to pay more for feed corn for animals, which means we pay more for food. And the real beauty of it is your fuel mileage goes down when you fill up with ethanol/gas instead of non ethanol gas. Thanks in part to environmentalists.