Nat'l Meat Ass'n v. Harris
| Decision Date | 23 January 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. 10–224.,10–224. |
| Citation | 181 L.Ed.2d 950,565 U.S. 452,132 S.Ct. 965 |
| Parties | NATIONAL MEAT ASSOCIATION, Petitioner v. Kamala D. HARRIS, Attorney General of California, et al. |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Steven J. Wells, for Petitioner.
Benjamin J. Horwich, for United States as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the Petitioner.
Susan K. Smith, Los Angeles, CA, for Respondents.
Philip C. Olsson, Dennis R. Johnson, Olsson Frank Weeda Terman Matz, PC, Washington, DC, Steven J. Wells, Counsel of Record, Heather M. McCann, Timothy J. Droske, Dorsey & Whitney LLP, Minneapolis, MN, for Petitioner.
Peter A. Brandt, Jonathan R. Lovvorn, Washington, DC, for Respondents The Humane Society of the United States, Farm Sanctuary, Inc.
Bruce A. Wagman, Schiff Hardin LLP, San Francisco, CA, for Respondents The Humane Society of the United States, Farm Sanctuary, Inc., Humane Farming Association, Animal Legal Defense Fund.
J. Scott Ballenger, Counsel of Record, Kerry J. Dingle, Latham & Watkins LLP, Washington, DC, for Respondents The Humane Society of the United States, Farm Sanctuary, Inc., Humane Farming Association, Animal Legal Defense Fund.
Leslie Brueckner, Senior Attorney, Oakland, CA, for Respondent Animal Legal Defense Fund.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General of California, Manuel M. Medeiros, State Solicitor General, David S. Chaney, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Douglas J. Woods, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Susan K. Smith, Deputy Attorney General, Counsel of Record, Los Angeles, CA for Respondents State of California, Attorney General Kamala D. Harris and Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.
The Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA or Act), 21 U.S.C. § 601 et seq ., regulates the inspection, handling, and slaughter of livestock for human consumption. We consider here whether the FMIA expressly preempts a California law dictating what slaughterhouses must do with pigs that cannot walk, known in the trade as nonambulatory pigs. We hold that the FMIA forecloses the challenged applications of the state statute.
The FMIA regulates a broad range of activities at slaughterhouses to ensure both the safety of meat and the humane handling of animals.1 First enacted in 1906, after Upton Sinclair's muckraking novel The Jungle sparked an uproar over conditions in the meatpacking industry, the Act establishes "an elaborate system of inspecti[ng]" live animals and carcasses in order "to prevent the shipment of impure, unwholesome, and unfit meat and meat-food products." Pittsburgh Melting Co. v. Totten, 248 U.S. 1, 4–5, 39 S.Ct. 3, 63 L.Ed. 97 (1918). And since amended in 1978, see 92 Stat. 1069, the FMIA requires all slaughterhouses to comply with the standards for humane handling and slaughter of animals set out in the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1958, (HMSA), 72 Stat. 862, 7 U.S.C. § 1901 et seq., which originally applied only to slaughterhouses selling meat to the Federal Government.
The Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has responsibility for administering the FMIA to promote its dual goals of safe meat and humane slaughter. Over the years, the FSIS has issued extensive regulations to govern the inspection of animals and meat, as well as other aspects of slaughterhouses' operations and facilities. See 9 CFR § 300.1 et seq. (2011). The FSIS employs about 9,000 inspectors, veterinarians, and investigators to implement its inspection regime and enforce its humane-handling requirements. See Hearings on 2012 Appropriations before the Subcommittee on Agriculture of the House Committee on Appropriations, 112th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1B, p. 921 (2011). In fiscal year 2010, those personnel examined about 147 million head of livestock and carried out more than 126,000 "humane handling verification procedures." Id., at 942–943.
The FSIS's inspection procedure begins with an "ante-mortem" examination of each animal brought to a slaughterhouse. See 9 CFR § 309.1. If the inspector finds no evidence of disease or injury, he approves the animal for slaughter. If, at the other end of the spectrum, the inspector sees that an animal is dead or dying, comatose, suffering from a high fever, or afflicted with a serious disease or condition, he designates the animal as "U.S. Condemned."
See § 309.3; § 311.1 et seq. (). A condemned animal (if not already dead) must be killed apart from the slaughtering facilities where food is produced, and no part of its carcass may be sold for human consumption. See § 309.13(a); 21 U.S.C. § 610(c).
The inspector also has an intermediate option: If he determines that an animal has a less severe condition—or merely suspects the animal of having a disease meriting condemnation—he classifies the animal as "U.S. Suspect." See 9 CFR § 309.2. That category includes all nonambulatory animals not found to require condemnation.2 See § 309.2(b). Suspect livestock must be "set apart," specially monitored, and (if not reclassified because of a change in condition) "slaughtered separately from other livestock." § 309.2(n). Following slaughter, an inspector decides at a "post-mortem" examination which parts, if any, of the suspect animal's carcass may be processed into food for humans. See 9 CFR pts. 310, 311.
The regulations implementing the FMIA additionally prescribe methods for handling animals humanely at all stages of the slaughtering process. Those rules apply from the moment a truck carrying livestock "enters, or is in line to enter," a slaughterhouse's premises. Humane Handling and Slaughter of Livestock, FSIS Directive 6900.2, ch. II(I) (rev. Aug. 15, 2011). And they include specific provisions for the humane treatment of animals that cannot walk. See 9 CFR § 313.2(d). Under the regulations, slaughterhouse employees may not drag conscious, nonambulatory animals, see § 313.2(d)(2), and may move them only with "equipment suitable for such purposes," § 313.2(d)(3). Similarly, employees must place nonambulatory animals, as well as other sick and disabled livestock, in covered pens sufficient to protect the animals from "adverse climatic conditions." See § 313.2(d)(1) ; § 313.1(c).
The FMIA contains an express preemption provision, at issue here, addressing state laws on these and similar matters. That provision's first sentence reads:
"Requirements within the scope of this [Act] with respect to premises, facilities and operations of any establishment at which inspection is provided under ... this [Act] which are in addition to, or different than those made under this [Act] may not be imposed by any State." 21 U.S.C. § 678.3
In 2008, the Humane Society of the United States released an undercover video showing workers at a slaughterhouse in California dragging, kicking, and electro-shocking sick and disabled cows in an effort to move them. The video led the Federal Government to institute the largest beef recall in U.S. history in order to prevent consumption of meat from diseased animals. Of greater relevance here, the video also prompted the California legislature to strengthen a pre-existing statute governing the treatment of nonambulatory animals and to apply that statute to slaughterhouses regulated under the FMIA. See National Meat Assn. v. Brown, 599 F.3d 1093, 1096 (C.A.9 2010).
As amended, the California law— § 599f of the state penal code—provides in relevant part:
The maximum penalty for violating any of these prohibitions is one year in jail and a $20,000 fine. See § 599f(h).
Petitioner National Meat Association (NMA) is a trade association representing meatpackers and processors, including operators of swine slaughterhouses. It sued to enjoin the enforcement of § 599f against those slaughterhouses, principally on the ground that the FMIA preempts application of the state law.4 The District Court granted the NMA's motion for a preliminary injunction, reasoning that § 599f is expressly preempted because it requires swine "to be handled in a manner other than that prescribed by the FMIA" and its regulations. App. to Pet. for Cert. 36a. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated the injunction. According to that court, the FMIA does not expressly preempt § 599f because the state law regulates only "the kind of animal that may be slaughtered," and not the inspection or slaughtering process itself. 599 F.3d, at 1098.
We granted certiorari, 564 U.S. ––––, 131 S.Ct. 3083, 180 L.Ed.2d 884 (2011), and now reverse.
The FMIA's preemption clause sweeps widely—and in so doing, blocks the applications of § 599f challenged here. The clause prevents a State from imposing any additional or different—even if non-conflicting—requirements that fall within the scope of the Act and concern a slaughterhouse's facilities or operations. And at every turn § 599f imposes additional or different requirements on swine slaughterhouses: It compels them to deal with nonambulatory pigs on their premises in ways that the federal Act and regulations do not. In essence, California's statute substitutes a new regulatory scheme for the one the FSIS uses. Where under federal law a slaughterhouse may take one course of action in handling a nonambulatory pig, under state law the slaughterhouse must take another.
Consider first what the two statutes tell a slaughterhouse to do when (as not infrequently occurs) a pig becomes injured and thus nonambulatory sometime after delivery to the slaughterhouse.5 Section 599f(c) prohibits the slaughterhouse from "hold[ing]" such an...
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