The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) has apparently launched a campaign “to publicly expose Perdue for using misleading labeling claims to manipulate consumers who are trying to make humane choices in the market place.” In a letter to Perdue Farms,Inc., AWI directs the company to cease advertising some of its chicken products as “Humanely Raised” or “Raised Cage Free” because these terms do not reflect “any meaningful improvement upon conventional husbandry.” According to the letter, such claims exploit the average consumer’s unfamiliarity with industry practices by implying “the chickens are raised under conditions that exceed the norm.” See AWI Press Release, May 12, 2010. Meanwhile, Perdue has reportedly defended the labels as responsive to consumer requests for additional education. “Consumers told us they regard the USDA Process Verified Program as being the most credible available today,” one Perdue representative was quoted as saying. “We therefore developed several USDA Process Verified programs,…
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued a new set of performance standards to reduce the incidence of Salmonella and Campylobacter bacteria in young chickens and turkeys. The new standards hold poultry slaughterhouses more accountable by decreasing the number of samples allowed to test positive for the pathogens. After two years under the new standards, USDA predicts that 39,000 illnesses due to Campylobacter will be avoided each year as will 26,000 fewer illnesses attributable to Salmonella. Although Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) Food Safety Director Caroline Smith DeWaal generally welcomed the standards, she lamented the fact that “USDA still lacks authority to enforce these standards by closing failing plants. For consumers to fully realize the benefits of the improved standards, Congress should reinstate USDA’s authority to enforce its performance standards.” In a related move, FSIS has issued the third edition of a…
A putative class action has been filed against individual plant managers and human resources personnel responsible for hiring employees at 16 Perdue Farms, Inc. facilities in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, alleging violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) in the hiring of illegal immigrants. Walters v. McMahen, No. 10-257 (M.D. Ala., filed March 22, 2010). The named plaintiffs seek to represent a class of legally employed workers whose wages were allegedly depressed because of the illegal scheme to hire at “extremely low wages” hundreds of employees who were in this country illegally. The plaintiffs also seek treble damages, preliminary and permanent injunctions, attorney’s fees, and costs. Among other matters, the plaintiffs allege that the illegal hiring scheme consisted of (i) “hiring workers who have previously been employed at Perdue under different identities”; (ii) hiring workers known to be using false identity documents; (iii) “hiring workers who cannot speak…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued a directive that revises its list of suitable ingredients that can used in the production of meat, poultry and egg products. FSIS will update the directive quarterly by issuing revisions as opposed to amendments. FSIS has added hypobromous acid and oat filler as suitable ingredients for certain processes. Hyporomous acid, which can kill the cells of many pathogens, may be used in water or ice under specific conditions to process meat and poultry products. Oat filler can be used in various meat products where binders are permitted and in whole muscle meat products “not to exceed 3.5 percent of the product formulation.” Oat filler must be listed as an “isolated oat product” or “modified oat product” in the ingredients statement and whole muscle meat products must be descriptively labeled.
Acting on behalf of environmental interest groups, a University of Maryland School of Law student clinic has filed a lawsuit against a chicken farmer and the company that owns and processes the farm’s chickens, alleging that the farm’s poultry waste is being discharged into and polluting navigable waters of the United States in violation of the Clean Water Act. Assateague Coastkeeper v. Alan & Kristin Hudson Farm, No. 10-487 (D. Md., filed March 1, 2010). The plaintiffs purportedly tested downstream waters and found high levels of fecal coliform and E. coli bacteria, as well as nitrogen, phosphorus and ammonia. They allege that the water carried from the farm eventually empties into the Chesapeake Bay. In response to the lawsuit, the Maryland Legislature reportedly approved a measure that requires the clinic to disclose its clients and budgets from the preceding two years. An early version of the bill would have penalized the university…
A federal court in Illinois has dismissed with prejudice the second amended complaint filed in putative class litigation alleging that a chicken processing company violated state consumer fraud and protection laws by selling its whole chickens with the extra giblets that it cannot sell with its cut-up chicken portions or as pet food. Nieto v. Perdue Farms, Inc., No. 08-07399 (N.D. Ill., filed March 17, 2010). According to the complaint, the defendant placed more than one heart, liver, gizzard, or neck in the whole chickens the company sold, thereby increasing the total weight of a whole chicken and “effectively forcing consumers to subsidize [defendant’s] costs of disposing of the extra giblets.” The named plaintiff also alleged that the company concealed its policy of including the extra offal when communicating with customers “through advertising generally and at the point of sale.” Finding that it had jurisdiction over the claims under the…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued a proposed rule designed to enhance the safety of meat and poultry products. The proposal would require that regulated establishments (i) promptly notify FSIS if any unsafe, unwholesome or “misbranded meat or poultry product has entered commerce”; (ii) “prepare and maintain current procedures for the recall of meat and poultry products produced and shipped by the establishment”; and (iii) “document each reassessment of the establishment’s process control plans, that is, its Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point plans.” According to a March 25, 2010, Federal Register notice, the proposed rule is needed because (i) “FSIS believes that prompt notification that adulterated or misbranded product has entered commerce is an important prerequisite for effective action to prevent such product from causing harm”; (ii) “having established procedures will help establishments to conduct effective and efficient recalls, should it be…
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has determined that certain business expense claims and a personal property claim made by a poultry processor for damages sustained during a break in electrical service caused by an ice storm were not covered by the processor’s insurance policy. George’s Inc. v. Allianz Global Risks US Ins. Co., No. 09-2220 (8th Cir., decided March 9, 2010). The insurer paid the processor’s claims for lost business income and extra expenses totaling more than $300,000, but refused to pay $155,000 in fixed labor and overhead costs and $30,000 for chickens that died in the processor’s holding shed. The court agreed with the insurer that the refused claims were subject to exclusions under the insurance policy, rejecting the processor’s contentions that (i) its labor and overhead costs were extra expenses because the processor experienced an increase in cost-per-pound when the business disruption caused it to process less chicken…
U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) has reportedly joined the California Poultry Federation (CPF) and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to reform labeling requirements for sodium-enhanced chicken. “Unfortunately, since 2003, chicken injected with sodium additives has been allowed to be misleadingly labeled as ‘100 percent all-natural,’” Boxer apparently stated at a February 24, 2010, press conference. “In these difficult times, our families should not have to pay $2 billion for saltwater that they don’t know about, they don’t want and they certainly don’t need.” Known as “plumping,” this practice purportedly involves injecting “saltwater, chicken stock, seaweed extract or some combination thereof into chicken to increase its weight and price, while simultaneously increasing sodium content by up to 700 [percent],” according to one CPF member’s internet campaign. Although USDA already requires poultry containing these ingredients to carry warning labels at…
In a development only recently noticed in the United States, New Zealand’s Commerce Commission took action in late 2009 against a poultry producer that claimed its chickens contained no genetically modified (GM) ingredients. According to a November 18, 2009, commission news release, Inghams Enterprises (NZ) Pty. Limited was warned that it risked breaching the Fair Trading Act by stating that its chicken products contained “No . . . GM ingredients” and “have no added hormones, GM ingredients or artificial colours,” when the company’s chickens were fed with a product that contained 13 percent GM soy. The commission based its action on a report issued by a Canterbury University genetics and molecular biology professor who concluded that “GM plant material can transfer to animals exposed to GM feeds in their diets or environment, and that there can be a residual difference in animals or animal-products as a result of exposure to GM…
