Can someone explain this?

Here's a simple question, that I'm not sure why no-one seems to propose.

There was a story last week about horrendous conditions at a California meat packing plant. The assholes at this plant were basically torturing the cows there. Sick cows were trying to walk on broken legs, being zapped with cattle prods, scooped up in forklifts. Just absolutely disgusting, horrendous treatment that makes you ashamed to be a human being.

I would give you a link to the article, but I really can't deal with stories about animal abuse. If I'm reading a newspaper and see a headline about it, I quickly turn the page. If a report comes on TV news, I have to leave the room. I just can't deal with the grisly details of dog fighting rings and other such atrocities.

But I absorbed the details of this one because I started to read a story about millions of pounds of meat being recalled from this plant - and it turned out this was why, they were putting these sick cows into the food supply system.

Apparently PETA or the Humane Society smuggled in a video camera and filmed some of this horror and it's floating around the Web somewhere - so if you have a stronger stomach than I do, you can probably find out more details.

Anyway, my question is this: why can't the Humane Society or the FDA, or whoever, have an inspector permanently stationed in every meat plant in the country to monitor how the animals are being treated?

Are there that many slaughterhouses? Would it be so costly? And if that's the case, make the meat companies pay their salaries as a cost of doing business.

Every damn movie you watch that has an animal in it features a line in the credits from the Humane Society saying it monitored the action on set and that "No animal was harmed in the making of this movie."

I'm glad they do that, but why can't they do the same at the meat plants? I really never think Steven Spielberg is going to torture an animal - but apparently the fucking food suppliers can't be trusted.

And, yes, I know the strangeness of having a meat eater worry about stuff like this. But if animals are part of man's food supply, there's no reason they have to be killed inhumanely.

I go through this dilemma every few years, but this story might actually have been the tipping point for me. I'm seriously thinking of giving up meat now. Not for health reasons - like anything in moderation, a little meat won't hurt you - but for my conscience.

Why is so much of mankind so fucking evil?