In the aftermath of the Chino slaughterhouse scandal and beef recall, one former employee has pleaded guilty to criminal charges and faces jail time and likely deportation. Charges were brought against Rafael Sanchez Herrera for his usage of a forklift to move cows too sick to stand in order to bring them to slaughter, which is a federal violation. His plea of guilty addresses his role in the abuse of the cows, as well as......

Fallout from the massive Westland/Hallmark meat recall scandal continues to affect Southland restaurants, stretching from San Diego to Ventura County. The California Department of Public Health has released a document listing every food purveyor which has purchased the recalled beef -- and at 59+ pages, it's a doozy. Chances are very good you have purchased or ingested some of Westland/Hallmark's product at some point, since markets and restaurants across the city are represented. My......

In late January a video documenting the mistreatment of cattle at the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. in Chino was released the Humane Society. The media (LAist included) was sensitive enough to leave this video on the rack but that didn't keep government officials from investigating and announcing the largest beef recall -- nearly 150 million pounds -- in U.S. history this weekend. This video contains footage of inhumane treatment of animals......

It sounds like the plot of a Charlton Heston film from the 70's, but the possibility of meat from cloned livestock has become a reality. The FDA just released an extensive risk assessment whose aim is "determining whether cloning poses any health risks to the animals involved in the cloning process, and whether any hazards arise during the development of clones or their progeny that may pose food consumption risks" (you can check out......

State Route 99 cuts straight through the Central Valley to Sacramento via Bakersfield and Fresno (see map below). And if you get too lost in your audiobook after the 5 skirts Angeles National Forest and meanders into the middle of nowhere, you might accidentally end up on it as we did yesterday. We didn't realize our mistake until we took note of the multicolored flowering bushes lining the median of the freeway, obscuring a great......