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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 10–224
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NATIONAL MEAT ASSOCIATION, PETITIONER v.
KAMALA D. HARRIS, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CALIFORNIA, et al.
on writ of certiorari to the united states
court of appeals for the ninth circuit
[January 23, 2012]
Justice Kagan
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Federal Meat
Inspection Act (FMIA or Act), 21 U. S. C. §601 et seq.,
regulates the inspection, handling, and slaughter of livestock for
human consumption. We consider here whether the FMIA expressly
preempts a California law dictating what slaughterhouses must do
with pigs that cannot walk, known in the trade as nonambulatory
pigs. We hold that the FMIA forecloses the challenged applications
of the state statute.
I
A
The FMIA regulates a
broad range of activities at slaughterhouses to ensure both the
safety of meat and the humane handling of animals. [
1 ] First enacted in 1906, after Upton
Sinclair’s muckraking novel The Jungle sparked an uproar over
conditions in the meatpacking industry, the Act establishes “an
elaborate system of inspecti[ng]” live animals and carcasses in
order “to prevent the shipment of impure, unwholesome, and unfit
meat and meat-food products.” Pittsburgh Melting Co. v. Totten, 248
U. S. 1 –5 (1918). And since amended in 1978, see 92Stat.
1069, the FMIA requires all slaughterhouses to comply with the
standards for humane handling and slaughter of animals set out in
the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1958, (HMSA), 72Stat. 862, 7
U. S. C. §1901 et seq., which originally applied
only to slaughterhouses selling meat to the Federal Government.
The Department of
Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has
responsibility for administering the FMIA to promote its dual goals
of safe meat and humane slaughter. Over the years, the FSIS has
issued extensive regulations to govern the inspection of animals
and meat, as well as other aspects of slaughterhouses’ operations
and facilities. See 9 CFR §300.1 et seq. (2011). The FSIS
employs about 9,000 inspectors, veterinarians, and investigators to
implement its inspection regime and enforce its humane-handling
requirements. See Hearings on 2012 Appropriations before the
Subcommittee on Agriculture of the House Committee on
Appropriations, 112th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1B, p. 921 (2011). In
fiscal year 2010, those personnel examined about 147 million head
of livestock and carried out more than 126,000 “humane handling
verification procedures.” Id., at 942–943.
The FSIS’s inspection
procedure begins with an “ante-mortem” examination of each animal
brought to a slaughterhouse. See 9 CFR §309.1. If the inspector
finds no evidence of disease or injury, he approves the animal for
slaughter. If, at the other end of the spectrum, the inspector sees
that an animal is dead or dying, comatose, suffering from a high
fever, or afflicted with a serious disease or condition, he
designates the animal as “U. S. Condemned.” See §309.3; §311.1 et
seq. (listing diseases requiring condemnation). A condemned animal
(if not already dead) must be killed apart from the slaughtering
facilities where food is produced, and no part of its carcass may
be sold for human consumption. See §309.13(a); 21
U. S. C. §610(c).
The inspector also has
an intermediate option: If he determines that an animal has a less
severe condition—or merely suspects the animal of having a disease
meriting condemnation—he classifies the animal as “U. S.
Suspect.” See 9 CFR §309.2. That category includes all
nonambulatory animals not found to require condemnation. [
2 ] See §309.2(b). Suspect livestock
must be “set apart,” specially monitored, and (if not reclassified
because of a change in condition) “slaughtered separately from
other livestock.” §309.2(n). Following slaughter, an inspector
decides at a “post-mortem” examination which parts, if any, of the
suspect animal’s carcass may be processed into food for humans. See
9 CFR pts. 310, 311.
The regulations
implementing the FMIA additionally prescribe methods for handling
animals humanely at all stages of the slaughtering process. Those
rules apply from the moment a truck carrying livestock “enters, or
is in line to enter,” a slaughterhouse’s premises. Humane Handling
and Slaughter of Livestock, FSIS Directive 6900.2, ch. II(I) (rev.
Aug. 15, 2011). And they include specific provisions for the humane
treatment of animals that cannot walk. See 9 CFR §313.2(d). Under
the regulations, slaughterhouse employees may not drag conscious,
nonambulatory animals, see §313.2(d)(2), and may move them only
with “equipment suitable for such purposes,” §313.2(d)(3).
Similarly, employees must place nonambulatory animals, as well as
other sick and disabled livestock, in covered pens sufficient to
protect the animals from “adverse climatic conditions.” See
§313.2(d)(1); §313.1(c).
The FMIA contains an
express preemption provision, at issue here, addressing state laws
on these and similar matters. That provision’s first sentence
reads:
“Requirements within the scope of this
[Act] with respect to premises, facilities and operations of any
establishment at which inspection is provided under . . .
this [Act] which are in addition to, or different than those made
under this [Act] may not be imposed by any State.” 21
U. S. C. §678. [
3
]
B
In 2008, the Humane
Society of the United States released an undercover video showing
workers at a slaughterhouse in California dragging, kicking, and
electro-shocking sick and disabled cows in an effort to move them.
The video led the Federal Government to institute the largest beef
recall in U. S. history in order to prevent consumption of
meat from diseased animals. Of greater relevance here, the video
also prompted the California legislature to strengthen a
pre-existing statute governing the treatment of nonambulatory
animals and to apply that statute to slaughterhouses regulated
under the FMIA. See National Meat Assn. v. Brown, 599 F. 3d
1093, 1096 (CA9 2010).
As amended, the
California law—§599f of the state penal code—provides in relevant
part:
“(a) No
slaughterhouse, stockyard, auction, market agency, or dealer shall
buy, sell, or receive a nonambulatory animal.
“(b) No slaughterhouse
shall process, butcher, or sell meat or products of nonambulatory
animals for human consumption.
“(c) No slaughterhouse
shall hold a nonambulatory animal without taking immediate action
to humanely euthanize the animal.” Cal. Penal Code Ann. §599f (West
2010).
The maximum penalty for violating any of these
prohibitions is one year in jail and a $20,000 fine. See
§599f(h).
Petitioner National
Meat Association (NMA) is a trade association representing
meatpackers and processors, in-cluding operators of swine
slaughterhouses. It sued to enjoin the enforcement of §599f against
those slaughterhouses, principally on the ground that the FMIA
preempts application of the state law. [
4 ] The District Court granted the NMA’s motion for a
preliminary injunction, reasoning that §599f is expressly preempted
because it requires swine “to be handled in a manner other than
that prescribed by the FMIA” and its regulations. App. to Pet. for
Cert. 36a. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit vacated the injunction. According to that court, the FMIA
does not expressly preempt §599f because the state law regulates
only “the kind of animal that may be slaughtered,” and not the
inspection or slaughtering process itself. 599 F. 3d, at
1098.
We granted certiorari,
564 U. S. __ (2011), and now reverse.
II
The FMIA’s preemption
clause sweeps widely—and in so doing, blocks the applications of
§599f challenged here. The clause prevents a State from imposing
any additional or different—even if non-conflicting—requirements
that fall within the scope of the Act and concern a
slaughterhouse’s facilities or operations. And at every turn §599f
imposes additional or different requirements on swine
slaughterhouses: It compels them to deal with nonambulatory pigs on
their premises in ways that the federal Act and regulations do not.
In essence, California’s statute substitutes a new regulatory
scheme for the one the FSIS uses. Where under federal law a
slaughterhouse may take one course of action in handling a
nonambulatory pig, under state law the slaughterhouse must take
another.
Consider first what the
two statutes tell a slaughterhouse to do when (as not infrequently
occurs) a pig becomes injured and thus nonambulatory sometime after
delivery to the slaughterhouse. [
5 ] Section 599f(c) prohibits the slaughterhouse from
“hold[ing]” such an animal “without taking immediate action to
humanely euthanize” it. And §599f(b) provides that no part of the
animal’s carcass may be “process[ed]” or “butcher[ed]” to make
food. By contrast, under the FMIA and its regulations, a
slaughterhouse may hold (without euthanizing) any nonambulatory pig
that has not been condemned. See supra, at 3. And the
slaughterhouse may process or butcher such an animal’s meat for
human consumption, subject to an FSIS official’s approval at a
post-mortem inspection. See ibid. The State’s proscriptions thus
exceed the FMIA’s. To be sure, nothing in the federal Act requires
what the state law forbids (or forbids what the state law
requires); California is right to note that “[t]he FMIA does not
mandate that ‘U. S. Suspect’ [nonambulatory] animals
. . . be placed into the human food production process.”
Brief for State Respondents 31. But that is irrelevant, because the
FMIA’s preemption clause covers not just conflicting, but also
different or additional state requirements. It therefore precludes
California’s effort in §§599f(b) and (c) to im-pose new rules,
beyond any the FSIS has chosen to adopt, on what a slaughterhouse
must do with a pig that be-comes nonambulatory during the
production process.
Similarly, consider how
the state and federal laws address what a slaughterhouse should do
when a pig is non-ambulatory at the time of delivery, usually
because of harsh transportation conditions. [
6 ] Section 599f(a) of the California law bars a
slaughterhouse from “receiv[ing]” or “buy[ing]” such a pig, thus
obligating the slaughterhouse to refuse delivery of the animal. [
7 ] But that directive, too,
deviates from any imposed by federal law. A regulation issued under
the FMIA specifically authorizes slaughterhouses to buy disabled or
diseased animals (including nonambulatory swine), by exempting them
from a general prohibition on such purchases. See 9 CFR §325.20(c).
And other regulations contemplate that slaughterhouses will in fact
take, rather than refuse, receipt of nonambulatory swine. Recall
that the FMIA’s regulations provide for the inspection of all pigs
at delivery, see supra, at 2—in the case of nonambulatory pigs,
often right on the truck, see Humane Handling and Slaughter of
Livestock, FSIS Directive 6900.2, ch. II(I). They further instruct
slaughterhouses to kill and dispose of any nonambulatory pigs
labeled “condemned,” and to slaughter separately those marked
“suspect.” See supra, at 3. In short, federal law establishes rules
for handling and slaughtering nonam-bulatory pigs brought to a
slaughterhouse, rather than ordering them returned to sender. So
§599f(a) and the FMIA require different things of a slaughterhouse
confronted with a delivery truck containing nonambula- tory swine.
The former says “do not receive or buy them”; the latter does
not.
The Humane Society
counters that at least §599f(a)’s ban on buying nonambulatory
animals escapes preemption because that provision applies no matter
when or where a purchase takes place. The argument proceeds in
three steps: (1) §599f(a)’s ban covers purchases of non-ambulatory
pigs made prior to delivery, away from the slaughterhouse itself
(say, at a farm or auction); (2) the State may regulate such
offsite purchases because they do not involve a slaughterhouse’s
“premises, facilities and operations,” which is a condition of
preemption under the FMIA; and (3) no different result should
obtain just because a slaughterhouse structures its swine purchases
to occur at delivery, on its own property. See Brief for Non-State
Respondents 43–45.
But this argument fails
on two grounds. First, its preliminary steps have no foundation in
the record. Until a stray comment at oral argument, see Tr. of Oral
Arg. 50, neither the State nor the Humane Society had disputed the
NMA’s assertion that slaughterhouses buy pigs at delivery (or still
later, upon successful ante-mortem inspection). See Brief for
Petitioner 46, n. 18; Brief for Non-State Respondents 44;
Brief for State Respondents 16, n. 5. Nor had the parties
presented evidence that a significant number of pigs become
nonambulatory before shipment, when any offsite purchases would
occur. The record therefore does not disclose whether §599f(a)’s
ban on purchase ever applies beyond the slaughterhouse gate, much
less how an application of that kind would affect a
slaughterhouse’s operations. And because that is so, we have no
basis for deciding whether the FMIA would preempt it. Second, even
assuming that a State could regulate offsite purchases, the
concluding step of the Humane Society’s argument would not follow.
The FMIA’s preemption clause expressly focuses on “premises,
facilities and operations”—at bottom, the slaughtering and
processing of animals at a given location. So the distinction
between a slaughterhouse’s site-based activities and its more
far-flung commercial dealings is not, as the Humane Society
contends, an anomaly that courts should strain to avoid. It is
instead a fundamental feature of the FMIA’s preemption clause.
For that reason, the
Humane Society’s stronger argument concerns California’s effort to
regulate the last stage of a slaughterhouse’s business—the ban in
§599f(b) on “sell[ing] meat or products of nonambulatory animals
for human consumption.” The Government acknowledges that the FMIA’s
preemption clause does not usually foreclose “state regulation of
the commercial sales activities of slaughterhouses.” Brief for
United States as Amicus Curiae 17. And the Humane Society asserts,
in line with that general rule, that §599f(b)’s ban on sales does
not regulate a slaughterhouse’s “operations” because it kicks in
only after they have ended: Once meat from a slaughtered pig has
passed a post-mortem inspection, the Act “is not concerned with
whether or how it is ever actually sold.” Brief for Non-State
Respondents 45. At most, the Humane Society claims, §599f(b)’s ban
on sales offers an “incentiv[e]” to a slaughterhouse to take
nonambulatory pigs out of the meat production process. Id., at 46.
And California may so “motivate[]” an operational choice without
running afoul of the FMIA’s preemption provision. Ibid. (quoting
Bates v. Dow Agrosciences LLC, 544 U. S. 431, 443 (2005)
).
But this argument
mistakes how the prohibition on sales operates within §599f as a
whole. The sales ban is a criminal proscription calculated to help
implement and enforce each of the section’s other regulations—its
prohibition of receipt and purchase, its bar on butchering and
processing, and its mandate of immediate euthanasia. The idea—and
the inevitable effect—of the provision is to make sure that
slaughterhouses remove nonambulatory pigs from the production
process (or keep them out of the process from the beginning) by
criminalizing the sale of their meat. That, we think, is something
more than an “incentive” or “motivat[or]”; the sales ban instead
functions as a command to slaughterhouses to structure their
operations in the exact way the remainder of §599f mandates. And
indeed, if the sales ban were to avoid the FMIA’s preemption
clause, then any State could impose any regulation on
slaughterhouses just by framing it as a ban on the sale of meat
produced in whatever way the State disapproved. That would make a
mockery of the FMIA’s preemption provision. Cf. Engine Mfrs. Assn.
v. South Coast Air Quality Management Dist., 541 U. S. 246,
255 (2004) (stating that it “would make no sense” to allow state
regulations to escape preemption because they addressed the
purchase, rather than manufacture, of a federally regulated
product). Like the rest of §599f, the sales ban regulates how
slaughterhouses must deal with non-ambulatory pigs on their
premises. The FMIA therefore preempts it for all the same
reasons.
III
California’s and the
Humane Society’s broadest argument against preemption maintains
that all of §599f’s challenged provisions fall outside the “scope”
of the FMIA because they exclude a class of animals from the
slaughtering process. See 21 U. S. C. §678 (preempting
certain requirements “within the scope of this [Act]”). According
to this view, the Act (and the FSIS’s authority under it) extends
only to “animals that are going to be turned into meat,” Tr. of
Oral Arg. 28—or to use another phrase, animals that will “be
slaughtered . . . for purposes of human food production,”
Brief for State Respondents 19 (emphasis deleted). Section 599f
avoids the scope of the Act, respondents claim, by altogether
removing nonambulatory pigs from the slaughtering process. [
8 ] The Ninth Circuit accepted
this argument, analogizing §599f to state laws upheld in two other
Circuits banning the slaughter of horses for human consumption. 599
F. 3d, at 1098 (discussing Cavel Int’l., Inc. v. Madigan, 500
F. 3d 551 (CA7 2007), and Empacadora de Carnes de Fresnillo,
S. A. de C.V. v. Curry, 476 F. 3d 326 (CA5 2007)). According
to the Court of Appeals, “states are free to decide which animals
may be turned into meat.” 599 F. 3d, at 1098, 1099.
We think not. The
FMIA’s scope includes not only “animals that are going to be turned
into meat,” but animals on a slaughterhouse’s premises that will
never suffer that fate. The Act’s implementing regulations
themselves exclude many classes of animals from the slaughtering
process. Swine with hog cholera, for example, are disqualified, see
9 CFR §309.5(a); so too are swine and other livestock “affected
with anthrax,” §309.7(a). Indeed, the federal regulations prohibit
the slaughter of any nonambulatory cattle for human consumption.
See §309.3(e). As these examples demonstrate, one vital function of
the Act and its regulations is to ensure that some kinds of
livestock delivered to a slaughterhouse’s gates will not be turned
into meat. Under federal law, nonambulatory pigs are not among
those excluded animals. But that is to say only that §599f’s
requirements differ from those of the FMIA—not that §599f’s
requirements fall outside the FMIA’s scope.
Nor are respondents
right to suggest that §599f’s exclusion avoids the FMIA’s scope
because it is designed to ensure the humane treatment of pigs,
rather than the safety of meat. See, e.g., Brief for State
Respondents 29; Brief for Non-State Respondents 39–40. That view
misunderstands the authority—and indeed responsibility—that the
FMIA gives to federal officials. Since 1978, when Congress
incorporated the HMSA’s standards, the FMIA has required
slaughterhouses to follow prescribed methods of humane handling, so
as to minimize animals’ pain and suffering. See 21
U. S. C. §§603(b), 610(b); supra, at 2–4. A violation of
those standards is a crime, see §676, and the Secretary of
Agriculture can suspend inspections at—and thus effectively shut
down—a slaughterhouse that dis-obeys them, see §§603(b), 610(c). To
implement the Act’s humane-handling provisions, the FSIS has issued
detailed regulations, see 9 CFR pt. 313, including some
specifically addressing animals that cannot walk, see §§313.2(d),
313.1(c). Those rules, as earlier noted, apply throughout the time
an animal is on a slaughterhouse’s premises, from the moment a
delivery truck pulls up to the gate. See supra, at 3–4. So the FMIA
addresses not just food safety, but humane treatment as well. Even
California conceded at oral argument that the FSIS could issue
regulations under the FMIA, similar to §599f, mandating the
euthanasia of nonambulatory swine. [
9 ] See Tr. of Oral Arg. 46–47. If that is so—and it is,
because of the FSIS’s authority over humane-handling methods—then
§599f’s requirements must fall within the FMIA’s scope.
The Circuit decisions
upholding state bans on slaughtering horses, on which the Ninth
Circuit relied, do not demand any different conclusion. We express
no view on those decisions, except to say that the laws sustained
there differ from §599f in a significant respect. A ban on
butchering horses for human consumption works at a remove from the
sites and activities that the FMIA most directly governs. When such
a ban is in effect, no horses will be delivered to, inspected at,
or handled by a slaughterhouse, because no horses will be ordered
for purchase in the first instance. But §599f does not and cannot
work in that way. As earlier noted, many nonambulatory pigs become
disabled either in transit to or after arrival at a slaughterhouse.
See supra, at 6–9, and nn. 5–6. So even with §599f in effect, a
swine slaughterhouse will encounter nonambulatory pigs. In that
circumstance, §599f tells the slaughterhouse what to do with those
animals. Unlike a horse slaughtering ban, the statute thus reaches
into the slaughterhouse’s facilities and affects its daily
activities. And in so doing, the California law runs smack into the
FMIA’s regulations. So whatever might be said of other bans on
slaughter, §599f imposes requirements within—and indeed at the very
heart of—the FMIA’s scope. [
10 ]
IV
The FMIA regulates
slaughterhouses’ handling and treatment of nonambulatory pigs from
the moment of their delivery through the end of the meat production
process. California’s §599f endeavors to regulate the same thing,
at the same time, in the same place—except by imposing different
requirements. The FMIA expressly preempts such a state law.
Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Ninth Circuit, and
remand this case for further proceedings consistent with this
opinion.
It is so ordered.
