New England Hospitality Groups Challenge Massachusetts Animal Cruelty Law
The National Pork Producers Council and a group of organizations representing restaurants and hotels in New England have filed a lawsuit aiming to enjoin Massachusetts from enforcing a law set to take effect August 15, 2022, banning the sale of pork produced from animals “that the business owner or operator knows or should know is the meat of a covered animal that was confined in a cruel manner, or is the meat of the immediate offspring of a covered animal that was confined in a cruel manner.” Mass. Restaurant Ass’n v. Healey, No. 22-11245 (D. Mass., filed August 3, 2022). The complaint urges the court to prevent enforcement until after the U.S. Supreme Court has reviewed a Commerce Clause challenge to a “materially identical California statute.”
The Massachusetts Pork Rule and California’s Proposition 12 ban “the sale of pork born to a sow confined in a way that prevents her ‘from lying down, standing up, fully extending the animal’s limbs, or turning around freely.'” The Ninth Circuit refused to enjoin the law, finding that the requirements apply equally to in-state and out-of-state businesses and “merely impose a higher cost on production, rather than affect interstate commerce.” Arguments in the appeal of that case are scheduled to be heard in October 2022.
