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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MEAT ASSOCIATION v. HARRIS, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CALIFORNIA
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MEAT ASSOCIATION v. HARRIS, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CALIFORNIA
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
NATIONAL MEAT ASSOCIATION v. HARRIS,
ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CALIFORNIA, ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
No. 10–224. Argued November 9, 2011—Decided January 23, 2012
The Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA), 21 U. S. C. §601 et seq., regulates a broad range of activities at slaughterhouses to ensure the safety of meat and the humane handling of animals. The Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS),which administers the FMIA, has issued extensive regulations togovern the inspection of animals and meat, as well as other aspects ofslaughterhouses' operations and facilities. See 9 CFR §300.1 et seq. The FSIS inspection procedure begins with an “ante-mortem” inspection of each animal brought to a slaughterhouse. If, at that inspection, a nonambulatory animal is found to suffer from a particularly severe disease or condition, it must be classified as “U. S. Condemned” and killed apart from the slaughtering facilities where food is produced. §§309.3, 311.1 et seq. Nonambulatory animals that arenot condemned are classified as “U. S. Suspect.” §309.2(b). They areset apart, specially monitored, and “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. FSIS regulations additionally prescribe methods for handling animals humanely at all stages of the slaughtering process, 9CFR pt. 313, including specific provisions for the humane treatmentof nonambulatory animals, 9 CFR 313.2(d).The FMIA's preemption clause, §678, precludes states from imposing requirements that are “within the scope” of the FMIA, relate toslaughterhouse “premises, facilities and operations,” and are “in addition to, or different than those made under” the FMIA. In 2008, California amended its penal code to provide that no slaughterhouse
2 NATIONAL MEAT ASSN. v. HARRIS
Syllabus
shall “buy, sell, or receive a nonambulatory animal”; “process, butcher, or sell meat or products of nonambulatory animals for humanconsumption”; or “hold a nonambulatory animal without taking immediate action to humanely euthanize the animal.” §§599f(a)–(c).Petitioner National Meat Association (NMA), a trade association representing meatpackers and processors, sued to enjoin enforcement of§599f against swine slaughterhouses, arguing that the FMIA preempts application of the state law. The District Court agreed, andgranted the NMA a preliminary injunction. The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that §599f is not preempted because it regulates only“the kind of animal that may be slaughtered,” not the inspection orslaughtering process itself.
Held: The FMIA expressly preempts §599f's application against federally inspected swine slaughterhouses. Pp. 6−14.
(a) The FMIA's preemption clause sweeps widely, and so blocks theapplications of §599f challenged here. The clause prevents a State from imposing any additional or different―even if nonconflicting―requirements that fall within the FMIA's scope and concern slaughterhouse facilities or operations. Section 599f imposes additional or different requirements on swine slaughterhouses: Where under federal law a slaughterhouse may take one course of action in handling a nonambulatory pig, under state law the slaughterhousemust take another. For example, when a pig becomes injured and thus nonambulatory sometime after delivery to a slaughterhouse, §599f(c) prohibits the slaughterhouse from “hold[ing]” the pig without immediately euthanizing it; and §599f(b) prohibits the slaughterhouse from “process[ing]” or “butcher[ing]” the animal to make food.By contrast, the FMIA and its regulations allow a slaughterhouse tohold (without euthanizing) any nonambulatory animal that has not been condemned, and to process and butcher such an animal's meat,subject to an FSIS official's approval at post-mortem inspection. Similarly, when a pig is nonambulatory at the time of delivery, §599f(a)prohibits a slaughterhouse from “receiv[ing]” or “buy[ing]” the pig.But the FMIA and its regulations expressly allow slaughterhouses to purchase nonambulatory pigs. See 21 U. S. C. §644; 9 CFR §325.20(c). And the FSIS inspection regime clearly contemplatesthat slaughterhouses will receive nonambulatory animals. So §599fsubstitutes a new regulatory regime for the one the FMIA prescribes.
Respondent Humane Society argues that §599f(a)'s ban on purchasing nonambulatory animals escapes preemption because it wouldnot be preempted if applied to purchases occurring off slaughterhousepremises. But the record does not disclose whether §599f(a) ever applies beyond the slaughterhouse gate, much less how an applicationof that kind would affect a slaughterhouse's operations. Moreover,
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Syllabus
even if the State could regulate off-site purchases, it does not followthat on-site purchases would escape preemption, because the FMIA's preemption clause expressly focuses on slaughterhouse “premises, facilities and operations.” And while the Humane Society is correctthat the FMIA does not normally regulate slaughterhouse sales activities, §599f's sales ban serves to regulate how slaughterhouses musthandle nonambulatory pigs on their premises. Its effect is to make sure that slaughterhouses remove nonambulatory pigs from the production process. It is therefore preempted by the FMIA. Pp. 6−10.
(b) Also rejected is the broad argument that §599f's challenged provisions fall outside the FMIA's scope because they exclude a class ofanimals from the slaughtering process, while the FMIA extends only to “animals that are going to be turned into meat.” In fact, the FMIA regulates animals on slaughterhouse premises that will never be turned into meat. For example, the Act's implementing regulations exclude many classes of animals from the slaughtering process, e.g., swine with hog cholera, 9 CFR §309.5(a). The argument that §599f'sexclusion avoids the FMIA's scope because it is designed to ensurethe humane treatment of pigs, rather than meat safety, misunderstands the FMIA's scope. The FMIA addresses not just food safety,but humane treatment, as well. See, e.g., 21 U. S. C. §§603, 610(b). Pp. 11−14.
599 F. 3d 1093, reversed and remanded.
KAGAN, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
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Opinion of the Court
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in thepreliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested tonotify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in orderthat corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 10–224
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 aCalifornia 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 atslaughterhouses to ensure both the safety of meat and the humane handling of animals.1 First enacted in 1906, after
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1The FMIA applies to all slaughterhouses producing meat for interstate and foreign commerce. See 21 U. S. C. §§601(h), 603(a). The FMIA also regulates slaughterhouses serving an exclusively intrastatemarket in any State that does not administer an inspection systemwith “requirements at least equal to those” of the Act. §661(c)(1).Because California has chosen not to adopt such an inspection program,
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Opinion of the Court
Upton Sinclair's muckraking novel The Jungle sparked anuproar over conditions in the meatpacking industry, the Act establishes “an elaborate system of inspecti[ng]” liveanimals and carcasses in order “to prevent the shipmentof impure, unwholesome, and unfit meat and meat-food products.” Pittsburgh Melting Co. v. Totten, 248 U. S. 1, 4–5 (1918). And since amended in 1978, see 92 Stat. 1069, the FMIA requires all slaughterhouses to comply with thestandards for humane handling and slaughter of animalsset out in the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act of 1958, (HMSA), 72 Stat. 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 issuedextensive 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 Hearingson 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 “antemortem” examination of each animal brought to a slaughterhouse. See 9 CFR §309.1. If the inspector finds no
——————
the FMIA governs all slaughterhouses in the State (except for any
limited to “custom slaughtering for personal, household, guest, and
employee uses,” §623(a)).
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Opinion of the Court
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 orcondition, 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 hedetermines that an animal has a less severe condition—or merely suspects the animal of having a disease meritingcondemnation—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,” speciallymonitored, and (if not reclassified because of a change in condition) “slaughtered separately from other livestock.”§309.2(n). Following slaughter, an inspector decides ata “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 additionallyprescribe 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 provisionsfor the humane treatment of animals that cannot walk. ——————
2The FSIS's regulations define “non-ambulatory disabled livestock” as “livestock that cannot rise from a recumbent position or that cannotwalk, including, but not limited to, those with broken appendages, severed tendons or ligaments, nerve paralysis, fractured vertebral column, or metabolic conditions.” §309.2(b).
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Opinion of the Court
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 thanthose made under this [Act] may not be imposed byany State.” 21 U. S. C. §678.3
B In 2008, the Humane Society of the United Statesreleased an undercover video showing workers at a slaughterhouse in California dragging, kicking, and electroshocking 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 preventconsumption 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 thatstatute to slaughterhouses regulated under the FMIA.See National Meat Assn. v. Brown, 599 F. 3d 1093, 1096 —————— 3The preemption provision also includes a saving clause, which states that the Act “shall not preclude any State . . . from making requirement[s] or taking other action, consistent with this [Act], with respectto any other matters regulated under this [Act].” 21 U. S. C. §678; see
n. 10, infra.
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Opinion of the Court
(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, including 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 grantedthe NMA's motion for a preliminary injunction, reasoningthat §599f is expressly preempted because it requiresswine “to be handled in a manner other than that prescribed by the FMIA” and its regulations. App. to Pet. forCert. 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 becausethe state law regulates only “the kind of animal that maybe slaughtered,” and not the inspection or slaughtering process itself. 599 F. 3d, at 1098.
We granted certiorari, 564 U. S. __ (2011), and now ——————
4The Humane Society intervened to defend §599f in the DistrictCourt. See Motion to Intervene in No. 08–1963 (ED Cal.), Record, Doc.
46. The organization continues as a respondent in this Court.
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NATIONAL MEAT ASSN. v. HARRIS
reverse.
Opinion of the Court 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 Actand 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 takeone 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) prohibitsthe 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. Bycontrast, 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
—————— 5The percentage of pigs becoming nonambulatory after delivery varies by slaughterhouse from 0.1 percent to over 1 percent. See McGlone, Fatigued Pigs: The Final Link, Pork Magazine 14 (Mar. 2006). About 100 million pigs are slaughtered each year in the United States, seeDept. of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, Livestock Slaughter 13 (Jan. 2011), so those percentages work out to between100,000 and 1,000,000 pigs.
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Opinion of the Court
animal's meat for human consumption, subject to an FSISofficial'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 mandatethat ‘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, butalso different or additional state requirements. It therefore precludes California's effort in §§599f(b) and (c) to impose new rules, beyond any the FSIS has chosen to adopt,on what a slaughterhouse must do with a pig that becomes nonambulatory during the production process.
Similarly, consider how the state and federal laws address what a slaughterhouse should do when a pig is nonambulatory at the time of delivery, usually because of harsh transportation conditions.6 Section 599f(a) of theCalifornia law bars a slaughterhouse from “receiv[ing]” or “buy[ing]” such a pig, thus obligating the slaughterhouseto refuse delivery of the animal.7 But that directive, too, deviates from any imposed by federal law. A regulationissued 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).
—————— 6According to one estimate, almost half of one percent of the pigs slaughtered annually in the United States become nonambulatoryduring the trip from farm to slaughterhouse. See National Pork Board, Transport Quality Assurance Handbook 25 (Version 4, 2010). About half that many die during transport. See ibid. 7Section 599f(a) also bans “sell[ing]” nonambulatory animals. But because slaughterhouses (unlike other entities referenced in the provision) do not typically sell live animals, that prohibition is not at issue inthis case. The statute's distinct ban on selling meat from nonambulatory animals that have been slaughtered is discussed infra, at 9–10.
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And other regulations contemplate that slaughterhouseswill 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 pigslabeled “condemned,” and to slaughter separately thosemarked “suspect.” See supra, at 3. In short, federal law establishes rules for handling and slaughtering nonambulatory pigs brought to a slaughterhouse, rather thanordering them returned to sender. So §599f(a) and theFMIA 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 inthree steps: (1) §599f(a)'s ban covers purchases of nonambulatory 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 donot 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 tooccur 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
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Opinion of the Court
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 onpurchase 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 forhuman consumption.” The Government acknowledgesthat 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 withthat general rule, that §599f(b)'s ban on sales does not regulate a slaughterhouse's “operations” because it kicksin 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
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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 nonambulatorypigs 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 onsales 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 theprocess from the beginning) by criminalizing the sale oftheir 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 imposeany regulation on slaughterhouses just by framing it asa ban on the sale of meat produced in whatever way the State disapproved. That would make a mockery of theFMIA'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 salesban regulates how slaughterhouses must deal with nonambulatory pigs on their premises. The FMIA therefore preempts it for all the same reasons.
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Opinion of the Court
III California's and the Humane Society's broadest argument against preemption maintains that all of §599f 'schallenged 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 certainrequirements “within the scope of this [Act]”). Accordingto this view, the Act (and the FSIS's authority under it)extends only to “animals that are going to be turned intomeat,” 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 theAct, 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 ani——————
8California's brief sometimes casts its argument in terms of the “operations” language of the FMIA's preemption clause (although the State appeared to abandon this phrasing at oral argument). In this version of the claim, California contends that the “operations” of a slaughterhouseare only those “of federal concern,” and that excluding a class of animals from the slaughtering process does not impinge on such operations. Brief for State Respondents 20, n. 9; see also id., at 20–21. We see no real difference between saying that a categorical exclusion of animals does not implicate “operations of federal concern” and sayingthat it does not fall within the scope of the Act. Accordingly, our answer to both forms of the argument is the same.
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mals 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 pigsare 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 theFMIA's scope.
Nor are respondents right to suggest that §599f 's exclusion avoids the FMIA's scope because it is designed toensure the humane treatment of pigs, rather than thesafety 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 FMIAhas 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 disobeys them, see §§603(b), 610(c). To implement the Act'shumane-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 throughoutthe time an animal is on a slaughterhouse's premises,
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Opinion of the Court
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 'srequirements 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 onthose decisions, except to say that the laws sustainedthere differ from §599f in a significant respect. A ban on butchering horses for human consumption works at aremove 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 pigsbecome 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 encounternonambulatory pigs. In that circumstance, §599f tells theslaughterhouse 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—
—————— 9Indeed, the FSIS recently solicited comment on a rulemaking petition that would require all nonambulatory disabled livestock, including swine, to be humanely euthanized. See 76 Fed. Reg. 6572 (2011). The FSIS has taken no further action on that petition.
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and indeed at the very heart of—the FMIA's scope.10
IV The FMIA regulates slaughterhouses' handling andtreatment of nonambulatory pigs from the moment of theirdelivery through the end of the meat production process. California's §599f endeavors to regulate the same thing, atthe same time, in the same place—except by imposing different requirements. The FMIA expressly preempts such a state law. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment ofthe Ninth Circuit, and remand this case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
—————— 10We finally reject California's argument, see Brief for State Respondents 20, that our reading of the FMIA's preemption provisionrenders its saving clause insignificant. That clause provides thatStates may regulate slaughterhouses as to “other matters,” not addressed in the express preemption clause, as long as those laws are“consistent with” the FMIA. 21 U. S. C. §678. So, for example, the Government acknowledges that state laws of general application (workplace safety regulations, building codes, etc.) will usually apply toslaughterhouses. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 22. Moreover, because the FMIA's express preemption provision prevents States from imposing only “addition[al]” or “different” requirements, §678, States may exact civil or criminal penalties for animal cruelty or other conduct that also violates the FMIA. See §678; cf. Bates v. Dow Agrosciences, LLC, 544
U. S. 431, 447 (2005) (holding that a preemption clause barring statelaws “in addition to or different” from a federal Act does not interfere with an “equivalent” state provision). Although the FMIA preempts much state law involving slaughterhouses, it thus leaves some room forthe States to regulate.
Avv. Antonino Sugamele

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