Civil — Constitutional Law — Federal preemption; meat

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U.S. Supreme Court

Civil
Constitutional Law
Federal preemption; meat

The Federal Meat Inspection Act expressly preempts state laws against federally inspected swine slaughterhouses.

The FMIA’s preemption clause sweeps widely, and so blocks the applications of ß599f challenged here. The clause prevents a State from imposing any additional or different? even if nonconflicting? requirements that fall within the FMIA’s scope and concern slaughterhouse facilities or operations.

Section 599f imposes additional or different requirements on swine slaughterhouses: 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. For example, when a pig becomes injured and thus nonambulatory sometime after delivery to a slaughterhouse, ß599f(c) prohibits the slaughterhouse from “hold[ing]” the pig without immediately euthanizing it; and ß599f(b) prohibits the slaughterhouse from “process[ing]” or “butcher[ing]” the animal to make food. By contrast, the FMIA and its regulations allow a slaughterhouse to hold (without euthanizing) any nonambulatory animal that has not been condemned, and to process and butcher such an animal’s meat, subject to an FSIS official’s approval at post-mortem inspection.

Similarly, when a pig is nonambulatory at the time of delivery, ß599f(a) prohibits a slaughterhouse from “receiv[ing]” or “buy[ing]” the pig. But the FMIA and its regulations expressly allow slaughterhouses to purchase nonambulatory pigs. See 21 U. S. C. ß644; 9 CFR ß325.20(c). And the FSIS inspection regime clearly contemplates that slaughterhouses will receive nonambulatory animals.

So ß599f substitutes a new regulatory regime for the one the FMIA prescribes.  599 F. 3d 1093, reversed and remanded.

10-224 National Meat Association v. Harris Kagan, J

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