Supreme Court rules against California slaughter law
In a ruling Monday (Jan. 23) the Supreme Court found that a California law, which tried to limit the way pigs are handled in slaughterhouses, went too far.
The state law was passed in 2008 in the aftermath of an undercover video shot by a humane group that showed California slaughterhouse workers dragging, kicking and using cattle prods on down cattle to try to get them to move.
The Humane Society of the United States shot the video and defended the law all the way to the Supreme Court.
The outcry after the video's release prompted California lawmakers to amend an existing state law on the treatment of non-ambulatory or "down" slaughter animals.
The amended law prohibited slaughterhouses and other stock buyers from buying, selling or receiving a non-ambulatory animal. But that meant that many healthy animals, that were just tired and stressed from transportation, could not be received at the slaughterhouse.
The California law also prevented the sale of meat from non-ambulatory animals into the human food chain. It prohibited slaughterhouses from holding "down" animals for any length of time and called for immediate euthanasia.
One of the reasons the lawsuit was brought in the first place was that many hogs suffer from "fatigued hog syndrome" - a problem that research has shown is more common among today's leaner, smaller, younger hogs.
If given a little time to recover from the stress of transport, these hogs recover and can walk off the trailer, said farm groups that were party to the lawsuit. If all those hogs had to comply with the state law in California, it would have caused big financial losses to producers, they added.
The court found the state law was more stringent than federal regulations, and that proved to be its downfall.
In a unanimous opinion, written by Justice Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court struck down the California law, ruling that the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) specifically prohibits states from passing laws that go beyond federal regulations.
The National Meat Association (NMA), headquartered in California, represents small- and medium-sized pork slaughterhouses. It challenged the California law, and had support from other farm groups.
They won an injunction that was later overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, and that put the case on track for the Supreme Court.
National Farmers Union (NFU) had joined the suit, filing briefs to back the opponents of the California law.
The NFU was pleased with the decision this week, saying that hogs suffering from the well-documented "fatigued hog syndrome" are fit for slaughter after they have rested and recovered from transport.
Chandler Goule, vice president of governmental relations for NFU, told Wisconsin State Farmer that it was an important decision and he was glad to see the court used "sound science" in making this decision.
Goule, who recalled showing pigs for nine years as a youth, said they can be smart and stubborn, and are easily stressed by heat and hauling.
"Science has shown that if they are given a little time to recover from this stress they are perfectly healthy," he said. "There is no reason these animals can't go into the food chain."
The case that went to the Supreme Court was "another example of an animal rights group overreaching," Goule said. "There is a lot of evidence out there about fatigued hog syndrome. It's a huge concern for the pork industry."
Each hog that was rejected for slaughter represented a loss for the producer who raised it, he added.
Producers all want to raise their animals humanely and see them transported safely, he noted, but animal rights groups impose "fuzzy human characteristics" on the situation.
His organization had joined with the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) and the American Association of Swine Veterinarians in asking the court to overturn the Ninth Circuit decision.
"These animals represent absolutely no health risk for consumers, so they should not be removed from the supply chain," said NFU President Roger Johnson. "Removing them only decreases the number of animals available for consumption and drives up food costs, while increasing bureaucratic red tape."
The ruling affirms the supremacy of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and role of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in regulating meat processing plants, said Doug Wolf, a hog farmer from Lancaster who is president of the NPPC. "It also recognized that non-ambulatory hogs with proper recovery time and veterinary oversight do not need to be condemned immediately in all cases."
The NPPC, which along with the American Association of Swine Veterinarians and the NFU filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, argued that the California law would create an animal health risk and criminalize the work of federal slaughterhouse inspectors.
The organizations also argued that the state law could have prevented meat processed in another state from being shipped to California because it did not adhere to the California ban.
"Non-ambulatory hogs that are allowed to recover pose no food-safety risk to the public," Wolf said. "Such pigs are inspected by USDA inspectors and veterinarians regarding their fitness for processing and entering the human food supply, and strong regulatory safeguards for humane treatment in the processing of animals already exist."
The high court's ruling noted that, in essence: "California's statute substitutes a new regulatory scheme for the one Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) uses. Where under federal law a slaughter house may take one course of action in handling a non-ambulatory pig, under state law the slaughterhouse must take another."
The federal preemption clause covers not just conflicting but also different or additional state requirements, Kagan wrote. "It therefore precludes California's efforts to impose new rules beyond any the FSIS has chosen to adopt on what a slaughterhouse must do with a pig that becomes non-ambulatory during the production process."
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) had argued that the court should maintain the California law's ban on slaughterhouse purchase of non-ambulatory hogs, but the court found that argument failed on several grounds.
If they had found in favor of the HSUS argument it "would have made a mockery of the FMIA's preemption provision," Kagan wrote.
One vital function of the federal Act, said the court, is to ensure that some kinds of animals will not be turned into meat. "Under federal law, non-ambulatory pigs are not among those excluded animals."
Instituted as a way to prevent the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy or "mad cow disease," the USDA already prohibits the slaughter of "down" cattle for human food.
The California law attempted to regulate the same ground as federal regulations except they imposed different requirements, the court ruled. "The FMIA expressly preempts such state law," the court said in reversing the judgment.
The court heard oral arguments on the case Nov. 9, 2011.
