(NaturalNews) A former slaughterhouse worker who has been charged with animal cruelty has said that he only did what his boss told him to do.
"That's how I was taught. He taught me to do the work. I didn't know it was a serious crime," Luis Sanchez Herrera said after he was videotaped shocking sick and crippled cattle with an electric prod to force them to stand.
The undercover video, filmed by an employee of the Humane Society of the United States, also showed cows being dragged with chains, sprayed with hoses or moved with forklifts to get around rules prohibiting the slaughter of "downer" cows. The
video led to the largest beef recall in U.S. history and the closure of the plant.
Sanchez and his supervisor, Daniel Ugarte Navarro, were arrested and charged with animal
abuse and illegal movement of a non-ambulatory animal. The counts carry a maximum sentence of more than five years prison.
Sanchez began working at the Westland/Hallmark plant after moving to the
United States from Mexico, where he had grown up on a farm. He said he became distressed when he first saw how
animals at the plant were treated.
"They feel [pain], too," he said. "How can you treat a poor animal that way?"
But when Sanchez complained, Ugarte "said I didn't know anything and I was nobody."
Sanchez only found out that
cows at other meat plants were treated differently when he spoke with truck drivers who brought the animals in for slaughter. He also said Ugarte warned the workers to be careful when federal inspectors were present.
According to Ugarte, the practices employed at the plant were taught to him by one of the company's owners. Those are the people who should be held accountable for the abuses at the plant, Sanchez said.
"I think it's unjust that I'm here," Sanchez said. "Where are the people in charge?"
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