Farm Sanctuary - Litigation

Litigation

Farm Sanctuary member Michael Baur, a professor at the Fordham University School of Law, filed an unsuccessful petition in 1998 with the USDA claiming the consumption of downed animals created a serious risk of transmission of some progressive neurological diseases, including bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease. The subsequent lawsuit, Baur v. Veneman, claimed then-current USDA regulations on downed livestock violated the Federal Meat Inspection Act. Southern District of New York Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald dismissed the case for lack of standing in 2002, but the 2nd Circuit reversed Buchwald's decision on December 16, 2003. The 2nd Circuit found it significant that "the USDA itself as well as other government agencies have recognized that downed cattle are especially susceptible to BSE infection." On December 30, 2003, six days after the USDA announced the first case of mad cow disease in the United States, the agency announced an interim policy against downed cattle entering the food supply (made permanent in 2007), and with the interim policy in place, the case was soon settled. In March 2009, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a final rule to amend federal meat inspection regulations, requiring a complete ban on the slaughter of cattle that become "non-ambulatory disabled" at any point.

Farm Sanctuary was part of a coalition of groups that challenged the New Jersey Department of Agriculture's standards governing the raising, keeping, and marketing of domestic livestock. The case went to the New Jersey Supreme Court, which in its July 30, 2008 ruling unanimously said the Department of Agriculture failed, in part, to carry out its mandate in setting humane standards. The Court further rejected agency regulations that certain mutilations of farmed animals such as castration, debeaking, and toe-trimming are "humane" as long as they are carried out by a "knowledgeable individual" "in a way to minimize pain."

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