By Claudine Wilkins and Jessica Rock, Founders of Animal Law Source™
DEFINITIONS A factory farm is a “for profit” corporate-owned industrial operation that raises large numbers of animals for fiber and food and strives to maximize output while minimizing costs. Nearly 10 billion animals are raised in this country each year for food, and of those, 99% are raised on factory farms. The majority of states allow certain acts towards farm animals, no matter how cruel, so long as these acts are considered to be “customary farming practices.” In essence, once a practice is considered “customary” within the farming industry, an individual cannot be prosecuted for committing the act, even if the act causes severe pain, suffering or abuse to an animal. “Customary” practices may include (1) having testicles, tails, horns, beaks or toes removed without anesthesia, (2) being confined in dark spaces so small that they cannot stand up or turn around, (3) force fed or starved, (4) male progeny being killed right after birth, (5) babies taken from their mothers immediately after birth, and (6) artificially inseminated over and over. Allowing such broad discretion to the farming industry makes it difficult to put more humane methods or standards of care into practice. As a result, ducks, geese, chickens, pigs, cattle and turkeys consistently suffer abuse and cruelty that is considered “customary” treatment on factory farms.
PIGS - Gestation crate or sow stall, is a metal enclosure 2 feet wide used in factory pig farming, in which a female breeding pig is kept during pregnancy and for most of her adult life. The crate is barely as big as the pig and has metal prongs for the floor. She may be moved to a slightly larger crate when nursing her young, but once the piglets are taken away, she is moved back to the gestation crate to start the process all over again. Male pigs also suffer through castration, ear docking, tagging and notching, nose ringing, tail docking, tattooing, teeth cutting and tusk trimming.
CALVES - Veal crates are 2 feet wide and allow just enough room for a male calf to sit or stand but to not move any other way because of the chain around its neck. These calves are not considered to be economically valuable so they are confined in barns with no sunlight, exercise or access to their mothers until they are slaughtered at four months old. They are fed a diet deficient in solid food or only fed milk to keep their flesh pale.
CATTLE suffer restricted movement in high density feed lots as well as many invasive procedures such as branding, castration, dehorning, ear tagging, nose ringing, and tail docking. Tail docking is the intentional removal of a cow’s tail, supposedly, (but not proven), to prevent bacteria from causing abnormalities in milk production. Usually at factory farms, docking is performed without anesthetics leading to severe pain and possible infections.
Claudine Wilkins and Jessica Rock are Attorneys at Law and Founders of the organization Animal Law Source™ www.animallawsource.org ©Animal Law Source 2017
POULTRY - Hens and turkeys are kept in high density battery cages that allow little movement or natural nesting and feeding behaviors. To prevent pecking and injuries, hens suffer beak trimming. Debeaking is a painful process that causes severe discomfort and results in difficulty for the bird to consume food properly.
GEESE AND DUCKS – Ducks and geese raised for foie gras have pipes or tubes shoved down their throats three times daily so that 4 pounds of grain can be pumped into their stomachs to produce the diseased “fatty liver” that some diners consider a delicacy. Others spend their entire lives crammed in dirty, dark sheds, where they suffer from injury and disease and are deprived of their natural instinctive behaviors.
FEDERAL LAWS Animals raised for food are the least legally protected class of animals in the U.S. There are no federal laws protecting animals on factory farms. The only federal laws that apply to farm animals is during transport and slaughter, except that these two laws exclude domestic birds, turkeys and poultry, or 99% of the animals raised on factory farms.
The 28-Hour Law (49 U.S.C., §80502) requires that animals transported for slaughter across state lines (except by air or water) must be given a five hour break every 28 hours and unloaded into pens for rest, food and water. However, the law is weakened and rarely implemented because of lack of enforcement, low fines and many exceptions that allow longer confinement. The USDA further weakened the five hour break rule by claiming it does not apply to birds or poultry, and by implementing its own regulations that allow the animals to be put back on cars in one hour and fed during transport (9 C.F.R. §89).
The Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act (7 U.S.C., §§1901-1907 - enforced by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, FSIS), requires that only cattle, calves, horses, mules, sheep and swine, (but not fish, chickens and rabbits killed for food), be quickly rendered insensible to pain before being slaughtered. The intent of the law is so that livestock are slaughtered in a humane manner to prevent needless suffering. To prevent the dragging of conscious, non-ambulatory animals (downer) cattle at slaughter houses, FSIS issued regulations in January 2004 (69 FR 1892) prohibiting them from being slaughtered and inspected for use as human food. Compliance has been lax, and enforcement of this Act has been inconsistent. Animal protection organizations continue to expose pervasive and gruesome violations of it. (See Appendix II for USDA guidelines on humane treatment and slaughter of animals).
There are no federal regulations pertaining to the humane treatment of factory farm poultry except that the slaughter must in accordance with “good commercial practices.” Regulations for poultry only address inspection and safe handling of the final product at “federally inspected slaughterhouses” to ensure that the meat is safe for human consumption.
Claudine Wilkins and Jessica Rock are Attorneys at Law and Founders of the organization Animal Law Source™ www.animallawsource.org ©Animal Law Source 2017
STATE LAWS State laws, rather than extend protections to farmed animals, usually exempt them from state criminal anti-cruelty laws. The exemption of animal husbandry protection on factory farms is typical in most state anti-cruelty statutes. The top five states with strong anti-cruelty laws are Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Oregon and California. The states with the weakest animal cruelty laws are Kentucky, Iowa, South Dakota, New Mexico and Wyoming. However, in most jurisdictions, animal cruelty is most commonly charged as a misdemeanor offense with minimal financial penalties, ($250 - $1000) and is difficult to prosecute because most anti-cruelty laws specifically exclude factory farms.
California, Washington and Michigan have banned battery cages for hens and Ohio has a moratorium on permits for the construction of battery cages. California also banned the sale of eggs in their state that come from hens raised in battery cages. (See Appendix I for case law on subject). Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Ohio (effective 2018), Oregon, and Rhode Island have banned the use of gestation crates for pigs. Arizona, California, Colorado, Kentucky (effective in 2018), Maine, Michigan, Ohio (effective in 2018) and Rhode Island have banned the use of veal crates. California, New Jersey, Ohio (effective in 2018) and Rhode Island have banned tail docking of cattle.
GEORGIA LAW There are no laws in Georgia banning battery cages, gestation crates, veal crates, debeaking, or tail docking because these practices are considered to be “customary.” Any practice considered “customary” cannot be successfully prosecuted on the basis of anti-cruelty statutes in the state. Georgia law follows the federal law and only covers animals being slaughtered or animals being transferred from state to state.
The Georgia Meat Inspection Act (O.C.G.A §26-2-110.1(a)(1)) in contrast to the Federal Meat Inspection Act, not only includes cattle, sheep, swine and horses raised for food, but also includes nontraditional livestock, rabbits, goats, mules, and other equines. These animals must be slaughtered in a humane manner or rendered insensible to pain before slaughter unless excluded for religious reasons. Georgia law still excludes chickens and other poultry from being humanely slaughtered and only inspects the meat post mortem to ensure that only unadulterated meat gets to the public.
PUBLIC POLICY FOR MORE HUMANE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS ON FACTORY FARMS Consumers are paying more attention to where their food comes from and how the animals are treated. Food service providers wanting to keep customers happy, are demanding more humane treatment of animals on factory farms. Large corporations have begun to have an impact on how animals are raised as they pledge to obtain their meat or eggs only from suppliers who raise their animals according to more humane standards. Major corporations, such as McDonalds, Burger
Claudine Wilkins and Jessica Rock are Attorneys at Law and Founders of the organization Animal Law Source™ www.animallawsource.org ©Animal Law Source 2017
King and Walmart, along with many others, have pledged to purchase goods only from “humane suppliers” who have not adopted the “customary factory farm standards” mentioned above.
Several major food service companies have already announced (in 2012) significant changes to their food supplies. Compass Group, the world’s largest foodservice company, and Hormel Foods plan to be 100 percent gestation crate free by 2017. Bon Appétit Management Company, which operates more than 400 cafés for corporations, universities, museums, and specialty venues, plans to be 100 percent gestation crate free by 2015. Even McDonald’s and Wendy’s have announced that they would require their pork suppliers to phase out gestation crates for pigs. Recognizing its inherent cruelty, major restaurants and grocers refuse to sell foie gras, including Costco, Safeway, Target, Giant Eagle, Whole Foods Market, and Wolfgang Puck.
AG-GAG OR ANTI-WHISTLEBLOWER BILLS A large number of new bills have been introduced seeking to silence efforts to expose animal abuse in agricultural facilities and factory farms. These bills are in response to investigations conducted by groups dedicated to showing the abuse of animals raised and killed for food. Organizations such as Compassion over Killing and Mercy for Animals have placed undercover investigators in meat slaughterhouses, dairy farms and poultry producing facilities around the country to document abuse. Many of the states where these facilities are located have subsequently introduced ag-gag bills to protect their businesses and profits. Groups of journalists often join animal rights activists in speaking out against ag-gag laws, because the laws are seen as an unconstitutional infringement on the right to freedom of speech.
Some bills backed by animal rights activists and journalists designed to protect whistleblowers who report possible mishandling of animals are finding it hard to get the legislation passed. The Safe Meat and Poultry Act of 2013 which would expand new requirements for safe meat handling and also include an entire section offering protection to whistleblowers did not pass final scrutiny in the U.S. Legislature. As a result, employees who are “discharged, demoted, suspended, threatened, harassed, or in any other manner discriminated against” for providing information to a supervisor or government agency about abuse at a factory farm are still not protected.
The process of raising farm animals has drastically been altered from thirty years ago. The family farm has morphed into a few massive corporations, allowing abuse of animals on a scale not previously imagined. Currently, federal legislation focuses on protecting the farming interests of a few giant corporations rather than protecting the welfare of animals produced for food. Many farming practices that increase profits also result in increased suffering of animals. It is perceived that any attempt to treat animals better will result in reduced profits and end up costing the consumer more at the checkout counter.
The current trend in the United States legal system implies we value profit and appetite over any pain felt by an animal raised for food. Consequently, animals raised for food production do not
Claudine Wilkins and Jessica Rock are Attorneys at Law and Founders of the organization Animal Law Source™ www.animallawsource.org ©Animal Law Source 2017
receive the legal protection from cruelty that all other animals receive. If we are to act as a society that condemns the unnecessary suffering of animals, our system of laws must be changed to resemble laws already passed in Western Europe, where certain farming practices have been abandoned because they have been recognized to be too cruel and abusive.
REFERENCES wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruelty to animals /Humane Slaughter Act /Veal http://animalrights.about.com/ https://www.animallaw.info/article/detailed-discussion- cattle-laws http://www.navs.org/what-we-do/keep-you-informed/legal-arena/agriculture/ag-gag/ http://www.peta.org/ http://growinggeorgia.com/features/2013/10/new-laws-focus-factory-farms-whistleblowers/ http://aldf.org/resources/advocating-for-animals/farmed-animals-and-the-law/ www.qsrmagazine.com/consumer-trends/push-humane www.humanesociety.org/issues/confinement_farm/facts/veal.html
APPENDIX I – CASE LAW Animal Legal Defense Fund, et al., v. C.L. Butch Otter and Lawrence Wasden (District Idaho 8/3/2015) “[U]nder the Equal Protection Clause, not to mention the First Amendment itself, government may not grant the use of a forum to people whose views it finds acceptable, but deny use to those wishing to express less favored or more controversial views.” Mosley, 408 U.S. at 96. Although the State may not agree with the message certain groups seek to convey about Idaho’s agricultural production facilities, such as releasing secretly-recorded videos of animal abuse to the Internet and calling for boycotts, it cannot deny such groups equal protection of the laws in their exercise of their right to free speech. Far from being tailored to a substantial governmental interest, §18-7042 classifies activities protected by the First Amendment based on content. Therefore, under the Equal Protection Clause, it cannot stand. IT IS ORDERED that ALDF’s Motion for Summary Judgment (Dkt. 74) is GRANTED.
Nat'l Meat Ass'n v. Harris (E.D. Cal., 2012) Trade association representing packers and processors of swine livestock and pork products sued the State of California for declaratory and injunctive relief barring a ban on slaughter and inhumane handling of non-ambulatory animals on federally regulated swine slaughterhouses. The Supreme Court held that the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) preempted the California Penal Code provision prohibiting the sale of meat or meat product of “non-ambulatory” animals for human consumption and requiring immediate euthanization of non-ambulatory animals.
Levine v. Conner, 540 F. Supp. 2d 1113 (N.D. Cal. 2008) the US District Court for the Northern District of California sided with the USDA and found that the legislative intent was to exclude poultry from the definition of "livestock." When plaintiffs appealed, the court in Levine v. Vilsack, 587 F.3d 986 (9th Cir. Cal. 2009) found that plaintiffs lacked standing and vacated the lower court's decision. This leaves us with no court ruling on whether the USDA correctly
Claudine Wilkins and Jessica Rock are Attorneys at Law and Founders of the organization Animal Law Source™ www.animallawsource.org ©Animal Law Source 2017
excludes poultry from the Humane Slaughter Act, but little chance of challenging the USDA's interpretation in court.
APPENDIX II
Georgia Meat Inspection Act, O.C.G.A. §§26-3-100.1 No person, firm, or corporation shall, with respect to any cattle, sheep, swine, nontraditional livestock, rabbits, goats, horses, mules, or other equines, or any carcasses, parts of carcasses, meat, or meat food products of any such animals:
The Georgia Meat Inspection Section of the Georgia Department of Agriculture’s Animal Industry Division State Meat Inspection Act, (O.C.G.A. §§26-3-100-116) conducts inspections of each animal prior to slaughter, as well as during slaughter and periodic tests also are performed on the final meat and meat products prior to being shipped from the plant. Hundreds of thousands of inspections are conducted at grocery stores, processing plants and slaughtering facilities to make sure that high standards of sanitation are maintained at each facility, including the outside premises of the property.
The Georgia Meat Inspection Section works cooperatively with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to provide mandatory inspections and to enforce regulations governing sanitation, slaughter, and processing of animals in state-licensed establishments. This cooperation with USDA enables GDA to intensify the frequency and quality of inspections, based upon uniform federal standards. All other meat and poultry processing and slaughter plants in the state are inspected by USDA personnel. Many inspectors also are certified by USDA to perform federal inspections in federal plants under the Talmadge-Aiken Cooperative Agreement. (See gr.georgia.gov/ag-dept-enforces-slaughter-meat- processing-regulations.aspx). Cooperation with USDA enables GDA to intensify the frequency and quality of inspections, based upon uniform federal standards. All other meat and poultry processing and slaughter plants in the state are inspected by USDA personnel.
O.C.G.A. §26-2-110.1. Approved methods for handling and slaughtering of animals; designation by Commissioner of methods of handling and slaughtering: (a) For purposes of this article, the following methods of slaughtering and handling are declared to be humane: (1) In the case of cattle, calves, horses, mules, sheep, swine, nontraditional livestock, rabbits, and other livestock, all animals are to be rendered insensible to pain by a single blow or gunshot or by an electrical, chemical, or other means which is rapid and effective before being shackled, hoisted, thrown, cast, or cut; or (2) By slaughtering and handling in connection with such slaughtering in accordance with the ritual requirements of the Jewish faith or any other religious faith that prescribes a method of slaughter whereby the animal suffers loss of consciousness by anemia of the brain caused by the simultaneous and instantaneous severance of the carotid arteries with a sharp instrument.
Claudine Wilkins and Jessica Rock are Attorneys at Law and Founders of the organization Animal Law Source™ www.animallawsource.org ©Animal Law Source 2017
(b) In addition to the methods prescribed in subsection (a) of this Code section, the Commissioner may designate as humane any methods of slaughtering and handling which have been so designated by the United States secretary of agriculture on or before April 7, 1981, pursuant to United States Code Section 7-1904. The Commissioner is further authorized to designate as humane other methods of slaughtering and handling which have been demonstrated by research, investigation, and experimentation to be humane with reference to the speed and scope of slaughtering operations and with reference to other existing methods and then current scientific knowledge.
Code of Federal Agriculture – Subchapter A. Part 381. Poultry Products Inspection Regulations: (a) Operations and procedures involving the processing, other handling, or storing of any poultry product must be strictly in accord with clean and sanitary practices and must be conducted in a manner that will result in sanitary processing, proper inspection, and the production of poultry and poultry products that are not adulterated. (b) Poultry must be slaughtered in accordance with good commercial practices in a manner that will result in thorough bleeding of the carcasses and ensure that breathing has stopped prior to scalding. Blood from the killing operation must be confined to a relatively small area.
HUMANE TREATMENT AND SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS (see http://www.fsis.usda.gov/) USDA is committed to ensuring the humane treatment and slaughter of all animals that are presented for slaughter. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is the Agency within USDA responsible for ensuring that meat, poultry, and processed egg products are safe, wholesome, and accurately labeled. FSIS is also responsible for ensuring industry's compliance with poultry good commercial practices and with the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act (HMSA), which requires that livestock be handled and slaughtered in a humane way. FSIS does not hesitate to take enforcement action against establishments that fail to meet humane handling requirements.
FSIS employs a cadre of District Veterinary Medical Specialists (DVMSs) who ensure that industry adheres to the HMSA and serve as experts regarding livestock humane handling issues and poultry good commercial practices. DVMSs verify humane handling at FSIS-inspected livestock slaughter facilities every 12-18 months, and review good commercial slaughter practices at poultry plants every 12 months, and share their findings with the in-plant inspection personnel to ensure regulatory compliance and consistency. Any humane handling violations discovered during these on-site reviews are handled appropriately.
FSIS assigns a Public Health Veterinarian (PHV) to every FSIS-inspected livestock slaughter establishment. PHVs and other inspection program personnel enforce humane methods in these plants by observing the daily handling and slaughter of all cattle, sheep, swine, goats, horses,
Claudine Wilkins and Jessica Rock are Attorneys at Law and Founders of the organization Animal Law Source™ www.animallawsource.org ©Animal Law Source 2017
mules, or other equines; ensuring plants take corrective action where needed; and taking enforcement action in response to instances of inhumane treatment. FSIS in-plant personnel take necessary regulatory action, up to and including suspension of slaughter operations, if they see any inhumane treatment of animals at livestock slaughter establishments.
As of January 2012, there are approximately 800 FSIS-inspected livestock slaughter establishments that slaughter approximately 150 million head of livestock per year, and approximately 300 poultry slaughter establishments that slaughter approximately nine billion birds per year.
Credit to Kaye Klapper
Claudine Wilkins and Jessica Rock are Attorneys at Law and Founders of the organization Animal Law Source™ www.animallawsource.org ©Animal Law Source 2017