A federal judge has plucked a challenge to new poultry plant inspection rules.
In a detailed, 55-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson concluded Food and Water Watch lacked the legal standing to challenge the new rules issued by the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.
The new rules give poultry plant operators a more active role in the inspection process. Obama administration officials say this is efficient. Critics say it’s giving the fox control of the henhouse. Judge Jackson says the dispute is out of his hands.
“Whatever the merits of the allegation that the new poultry-processing regulation is a policy that the USDA should never have adopted, this Court finds that such ‘injury’ precisely the type of generalized grievance that Article III courts are not empowered to consider,” Jackson wrote, in the decision dated Feb. 9.
The new National Poultry Inspection System, adopted following years of study, relieves federal inspectors of the duty to sort poultry carcasses. Poultry plant workers take over the job, leaving only one online federal inspector at the end of the slaughter line to whom the sorted and reprocessed birds are presented for final inspection.
Food and Water Watch, the group that filed suit along with several individuals against the rules in 2014, describes itself as “a national, non-profit, public interest, consumer advocacy organization that works to ensure safe food and clean water.” The group claimed the changes violated the Poultry Plant Inspection Act.
The lawsuit was predicated on the claim that the new inspection rules will put people at greater risk of disease. Jackson didn’t buy it.
“Plaintiffs’ ‘fox guarding the henhouse’ assertions of increased-risk appear to be both unsupported and overblown,” Jackson wrote, adding that his reading of the evidence suggests that the new rules “will reduce, not increase, the likelihood that adulterated poultry will enter the market.”
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