US Supreme court overturns California meat safety law

The US Supreme Court Monday overturned a California law that set strict standards for slaughtering and selling the meat of sick and injured animals.

The Supreme Court said California’s law ran afoul of the Federal Meat Inspection Act.

The California law forbids a slaughterhouse to “buy, sell, or receive a nonambulatory animal,” butcher it or sell its meat, or hold it without immediately euthanizing it.
Federal law has no requirement of immediately euthanizing the animals.

The California State Legislature passed the law in response to a documentary released in January 2008. It showed obviously sick animals just before being slaughtered and cruel treatment of them by slaughterhouse workers at two plants in Chino, California.

The film showed the animals being dragged with chains, rammed with a forklift or having pressurized water squirted up their nostrils to get them to move.

However, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that California lacks authority to make regulations different from federal law at slaughterhouses inspected by the US Food and Drug Administration.

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Just wait until the Tea Partying GOP finally gets it way and eliminates the USDA… then we’ll be free of any regulations on the slaughter of animals.