THE KILLING FLOOR

摘要

In the East Texas hamlet of Kaufman last month, a fetid wind ruffled the stripes of the largest American flag in town. It had been a gift to locals from execu-tives of the pungent Dallas Crown slaughterhouse. A few blocks away, company president Michael de-Beukelaar stood in City Hall for the Pledge of Allegiance, conspicuously holding his tongue. The Belgian and his foreign bosses were about to learn whether a city commission would force a shutdown of the plant, which had supplied meat to tables in Europe and Japan for more than 20 years. deBeukelaar seemed most concerned with one intractable problem: Americans don't eat horse.