Guarding against potential terrorist attacks
Miriam George
77 Posts
Are any of you taking special precautions at your business or preparing in any special way to be prepared for potential attacks by terrorists? One of our senior VPs asked me about doing something, but since we already train for emergencies, what do you recommend I do (if anything) to have our employees be better prepared?
I can't foresee us having any "insider" employees who are here to infiltrate our business, but this may be a risk for telecommunications, banking, finance businesses, etc.
I can't foresee us having any "insider" employees who are here to infiltrate our business, but this may be a risk for telecommunications, banking, finance businesses, etc.
Comments
We are telling our employees to keep an extra look out for "gawkers". Not that we don't enjoy tourist because it is a pretty awesome site to see thousands of cattle in a concentrated area. We do this because during the months after 9/11 there was a suspicious older model yellow mustang taking a rode trip from south Texas up into SW Kansas looking at feed yards a long the way. Some people said the individuals were of Middle Eastern decent, but out here we do have many Hispanics, and from a distance, might look Middle Eastern. Needless to say, with Foot and Mouth Disease and BSE (Mad Cow), we can never be too careful.
Everyone who enters the yards must check-in and show proper id. Probably not uncommon in the big cities, but out here in sw Kansas we were pretty trusting until 9/11.
We are doing other things like, making sure we have an origination place on the cattle (sometimes they can be owned by 3-5 people before entering the yard), making sure cattle are proplery vaccinated, or "processed" as soon as they enter the yard, etc.
Boy, I am long winded today, it must be Friday!
AH! Back to meat science 101
I don't think the cattle industry uses electrocution (to hard on the meat) But, they do have, in the packing plants a place where they use a bolt gun to the head(a gun with a spring loaded bolt, to "render the animal senseless" or knock them so far out they don't know, can't feel what is going to happen next, bleeding out. The whole point is to get a head start on rigormortis. Some places, mostly hog facilities have the hogs go through a "gas chamber" type thing. They give them just enough gas to render senseless and then start the slaughtering process. But, most common in any livestock slaughtering facility is the bolt gun.
At least in the hog business, electrical stimulation is only used after the animal is dead, to help keep the acidity level down, if it rises to fast you will get what they call PSE meat, Pale, soft, and exudatetive, or not attractive to the end consumer. You have to do it at the right time with the right amount, otherwise it could spead up the acid build up. This isn't common in the beef industry because they haven't found it useful.
Ok, class that was your lesson for today. Tomorrow we will discuss what happends after they bleed out! Anyone want to guess...? I didn't think so!
We asked ourselves, "What would we do if the employees are trapped in the office for three days?" I know there's not nearly enough food in the snack bar to keep everyone happy for that long.