The Issues

Litigation

When Inhumanity Knows No Bounds
Statement by Gene Baur, President & Co-Founder

On November 9, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that will have serious ramifications for farm animals, particularly downed animals, those too sick even to stand. The case, NMA v. Harris, addresses whether a California law prohibiting the slaughter of downed animals for human food is preempted by federal law, and therefore invalid.

Beginning with the 1986 rescue of Hilda, a downed sheep who had been discarded on a pile of dead animals behind Lancaster Stockyards in Pennsylvania, Farm Sanctuary has campaigned to expose and end the inhumane treatment of downed animals at farms, stockyards and slaughterhouses. In the mid-1990s, we documented cruelty to downed animals throughout California, which led to passage of state legislation making it illegal to drag downed animals, push them with forklifts, and leave them to suffer, or deliver them to stockyards or state inspected slaughterhouses.

One California slaughterhouse where we documented rampant cruelty was Hallmark, a facility just east of Los Angeles that specializes in killing worn-out dairy cows. In fact, it had been known then as ‘dairyland,’ and was located near many dairies. In 2008, the Humane Society of the U.S. obtained undercover footage showing unconscionable abuses of downed dairy cows on their way to slaughter at Hallmark, which led to a national media exposé. The slaughterhouse was found guilty of violating California’s downed animal law and federal regulations.  Following Hallmark, lawmakers were moved to broaden California’s downed animal law, extending it to animals being sent to all slaughterhouses, including United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), or federally inspected, slaughterhouses.

In an effort to wring every dollar it can from downed animals, agribusiness opposed this sensible policy and has now challenged it in court. At the federal level, it is illegal for downed cattle to be slaughtered for human food because of concerns about mad cow disease and animal welfare, but it’s still legal and routine for downed pigs and other livestock to be killed and sold for human food. The National Meat Association and their agribusiness allies, including the National Pork Producers Council, want to continue with these cruel and irresponsible practices.

For years, the cattle industry argued that downed cows were fatigued or stubborn, and that it was inappropriate to deny agribusiness the right to make money by slaughtering them. The same sort of self-serving and inaccurate argument is now being put forward regarding downed pigs. This is an industry that knows no bounds when it comes to squeezing every last dollar out of suffering animals. It operates outside the boundaries of acceptable conduct, and what’s more, so does the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which explicitly allows diseased animals to be killed and sold for human food. We will keep you posted on the Supreme Court’s pending decision, but I am concerned.

Policymakers in Washington, DC, and in state capitols have tended to favor agribusiness interests over the interests of animals and society at large. We will continue working on legislative matters, but it is increasingly apparent that the marketplace will play an important role in creating necessary change. People concerned about the risks associated with consuming the flesh of downed and diseased animals can take matters into their own hands, by eating plants instead of animals.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund has done a very good job of providing additional background on the NMA v. Harris case: http://www.aldf.org/article.php?id=1862.