- Edward C. Roberts, owner of Tooele Valley Meat, charged with animal cruelty.
- Roberts allegedly ordered a conscious steer's hoof cut off on Nov. 5.
GRANTSVILLE — The owner of a Tooele County butcher shop has been charged with abusing one of his steers.
Edward C. Roberts, 78, was charged Tuesday in 3rd District Court with aggravated cruelty to an animal, a class A misdemeanor.
Roberts, who is the owner of Tooele Valley Meat, 985 E. Main in Grantsville, is accused of telling an employee to cut off the hoof of a conscious steer on Nov. 5, according to charging documents.
"Roberts … did cut off an extremity of an animal without first 'stunning' the animal as requested by a United States Department of Agriculture inspector who was present on the scene. The inspector, on multiple occasions, told the defendant that the animal must first be stunned and that severing a hoof from a conscious animal was unacceptable. Despite these warnings, the defendant pressed forward and severed the hoof," the charges allege.
The alleged action also led to a brief suspension of USDA inspection services in November, preventing Tooele Valley Meat from commercially selling its products.
According to the notice of suspension letter sent to the business, "the steer, while queued in line outside the building for the stun box, attempted to jump over a gate and got its left front hoof stuck between the gate post, hinge and physical gate. In an attempt to free itself from the situation, the steer broke (compound fractured) its leg approximately in the ankle location."
Employees were unable to open the gate to free the steer and could not lift the steer due to its weight, the letter states. About 10 minutes later, Roberts told one of his employees to get a knife and cut off the hoof.
"I informed the plant owner that he would have to stun the steer outside before 'cutting its hoof off.' The plant owner responded that he didn't know how he would get the steer into the building if he did that, that the steer would get up and run into the building once free from the gate. Again, I said the steer needed to be stunned; that you can't cut the hoof off a living animal. This request was disregarded," a Food and Safety inspector who was on scene wrote in the suspension letter.
Following their suspension, Roberts and his company issued an apology.
"Tooele Valley Meat acknowledges the recent suspension notice issued by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service regarding our slaughter operations following an incident on Nov. 5, 2025. We sincerely apologize for our actions this incident caused. While our intent was to act quickly to relieve an animal in severe distress, we recognize that our response did not meet federal humane handling standards or our own expectations," the company said, according to the Tooele Transcript Bulletin. "In the urgency of the moment, we attempted to free the animal to prevent further suffering, but we fully acknowledge that our method of doing so was not appropriate. We take full responsibility for this error in judgment."
The nonprofit group, About Animal Paritsan, weighed in Wednesday on Roberts' criminal charge.
"The fact that an animal may eventually be slaughtered is not a license to mistreat them, especially in their final, most vulnerable moments," Zoe Griffiths, the group's Research and Operations Associate, said in a statement. "We are grateful to the Tooele County Sheriff's Office and the county attorney's office for their combined efforts to ensure that Tooele Valley Meat will be held accountable for this cruelty."
