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Federal court upholds California ban on sale of ‘downer’ pork

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Score one for the animal rights and food safety crowds: A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that a California law banning the sale, purchase or transport of cattle unable to walk can be extended to include pigs.

The case, National Meat Assn. vs. Brown, was a challenge by the pork industry to a 2008 state law that banned the slaughter of animals too sick or weak to stand on their own. The law emerged after the release of an undercover video of a Chino-based slaughterhouse where workers were shown using chains and forklifts to drag cows too injured or ill to stand.

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The footage from the Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. led to the largest beef recall in the country’s history, and prompted the federal government – eager to prevent mad cow disease and other contaminates from entering the nation’s food supply – to permanently ban the slaughter of such cattle. (Warning: The footage, found here, is graphic.)

But the California law went further and extended such bans to “downer” swine, goats and sheep.

Although a lower court had ruled in favor of the pork producers, U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in the decision that California’s ban was not trumped by federal meat inspection rules.

“In effect,’ Kozinski wrote, ‘the district court reasoned that states may ban the slaughter of certain species, but once a state allows a species to be slaughtered, it cannot impose further restrictions. Hogwash.”

Livestock farmers, of course, are more than a little peeved by the ruling. Among other things, ‘the decision fails to address the huge distinction between animals – in this case, swine in particular – that are fatigued by travel and are therefore at rest, from animals that are physically unable to stand up and move,” the National Meat Assn. said in a statement.

Don’t count on the fight being over, though: The organization said it’s weighing its legal options.

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-- P.J. Huffstutter

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