District Judge William Young of Boston largely upheld Massachusetts’ Q3 pork law, rejecting an industry-backed attempt to block its enforcement. This law, known as the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, bans the sale of pork from pigs kept in tightly confined spaces.
The decision’s key points included the rejection of federal presumption. The judge dismissed arguments that the Federal Meat Inspection Act preempted the state law. He also says that the Massachusetts law merely bans the sale of non-compliant pork meat and doesn’t regulate slaughterhouse operations directly. While the majority of the law was upheld, the judge did rule that a specific provision known as the “slaughterhouse exception” was unconstitutional. The exception allowed certain processors to directly sell non-compliant pork to consumers.
The judge determined that the unconstitutional provision could be severed from the rest of the law, allowing the main components of the legislation to remain in effect.
