The owner of a meat-processing plant that supplied meat to the federal school-lunch program was sentenced this month to six years in prison and was fined $70,000 for selling contaminated meat from June 1981 until December 1983.
Chief Judge Sherman G. Finesilver of the U.S. District Court for Colorado imposed the prison term on Rudy Stanko Jr., owner of the Cattle King Meat Packing Company, after a jury of 14 found Mr. Stanko guilty on charges of conspiracy to violate the federal meat-in-spection act. (See Education Week, Aug. 22, 1984.) The judge also sentenced Cattle King’s chief salesman, Gary Waderich, to 15 months in prison.
Lawyers for the two men are expected to appeal the decision, according to Douglas W. Curless, assistant United States attorney with the U.S. attorney’s office in Denver, Colo.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service stopped distribution of 6.4 million pounds of hamburger from Cattle King last September after an investigation spurred by NBC-tv’s news program, “First Camera,” found that Cattle King was illegally processing meat from substandard cattle.
