The imminent opening of the large commercial Slaughterhouse on Colvin Street has been a point of civic contention since Council’s divided 2019 votes to afford the Slaughterhouse essentially unregulated treatment. Council’s votes disregarded the exhaustive investigative results of its own Vice Mayor, who carefully and comprehensively documented the negative hygiene, safety, odor, and related impacts of a similar facility, controlled by the same Slaughterhouse operator, in Philadelphia.
The Slaughterhouse is owned by a for-profit, holding company of multiple similar facilities. The Slaughterhouse is not operated by a religious assembly, and was entitled to no religious deference by Council – even though retiring Councilor Del Pepper has publicly acknowledged that Council relied on a legal memorandum claiming the contrary.
The Slaughterhouse operator originally claimed that the facility would fall into the “small” category of facility, but within the last two weeks has admitted publicly that the Slaughterhouse will be a large and high-volume facility that will slaughter, package, and distribute over 90,000 animals per year,[1] rather than the 20,000 animals per year on which the permit was based.[2] The Slaughterhouse is subject to no granular or meaningful permit limits on particular emissions, waste removal, fluid waste migration, or odor. Thanks to the intercession of Councilor John Taylor Chapman, the Slaughterhouse will not be subject to any material traffic or parking regulation, even though it can be expected to attract a minimum of several hundred cars per day. Council acted in such clumsy haste to grant the Slaughterhouse lightened regulation that Council accepted a condition to handle certain deliveries and waste removal from the back door of the Slaughterhouse building – but there is no back door.
Council also elected to negotiate deregulated health, safety, and traffic treatment of the Slaughterhouse directly from the bench, at its second voting meeting, accepting from the Slaughterhouse owner an unqualified statement that there was “no problem” with any of the Slaughterhouse’s affiliated plants elsewhere. Council had already been warned in writing that this claim was positively untrue – the Slaughterhouse operator and its managers have been sued for labor abuse in New York;[3] found culpable in lying to local government in permitting matters in Massachusetts;[4] criminally convicted of barbaric animal cruelty and other offenses in Connecticut;[5] found culpable in regulatory violations and in default of court orders in New York;[6] found culpable in regulatory violations in Pennsylvania (at the very facility viewed by Alexandria’s Vice Mayor);[7] and found culpable in multiple Federal regulatory matters. I forwarded these and further records to Council.
Except for Vice Mayor and Councilor Amy Jackson, who attentively reviewed the record, Mayor Wilson and Councilors Chapman and Canek Aguirre acted as the cheerleaders and deregulators of a facility that is hazardous, that City Code defines as noxious. The Slaughterhouse can be counted on to drive away nearby businesses and in fact numerous of those businesses appeared before Council and begged them to deny the Slaughterhouse’s permit application. Every former Mayor of Alexandria has been critical of the permitting vote, one of them writing to Council twice to warn of the entirely negative impact of their improvident vote.
Alexandria’s voters need to bear in mind that three incumbents now running for re-election – Wilson, Aguirre, and Chapman – voted against the public interest, against public health, against honesty and transparency in regulation, and in favor of destroying nearby small women-owned businesses and incenting a permit applicant to openly lie to obtain favorable treatment. They deserve calumny, and they do not deserve our votes.
Mark C. Williams
Personal & Unofficial
[1] See, Halal slaughterhouse to open in two weeks, March 31, 2021, ALXNow, viewed at https://www.alxnow.com/2021/03/31/just-in-halal-slaughterhouse-to-open-in-two-weeks/ .
[2] See, March 22, 2019 Memo, Stephen A. Haering, MD to City Council, SUP Docket No. 2018-00117 at p.1, noting the legal maximum of 20,000 animals per year.
[3] Zavala v. Mused, et al., N.Y.S. S.Ct. Suffolk County, Index No. 13-30422, order denying defendant’s motion for summary judgment March 1, 2017.
[4] See, City of Everett, MA Hearing Records and Minutes, Sept. 26, 2016.
[5] Halal meat store closes after staffers slaughtered cow in Home Depot parking lot in Connecticut, Jami Ganz, N.Y. Daily News, July 19, 2019.
[6] Commissioner v. Saba Live Poultry et al., N.Y.S. S.Ct. Albany Co., Index No. 900292/2016, Order, April 18, 2017.
[7] Philadelphia Health Department, Food Facility Inspection Report, Saba Live Poultry, April 2, 2019.
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