June, 17 2021, 07:05pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Amy van Saun, avansaun@centerforfoodsafety.
George Kimbrell, gkimbrell@centerforfoodsafety.
USDA to Reinstate Vital Organic Animal Welfare Protections Gutted by Trump Administration
WASHINGTON
In a victory for organic farmers, advocates, and animal welfare, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced today that it will be reinstating animal welfare standards on farms producing organic meat that were withdrawn during the Trump Administration. Secretary Vilsack announced that the USDA will "reconsider the prior Administration's interpretation that the Organic Foods Production Act does not authorize USDA to regulate the practices that were the subject of the 2017 Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices (OLPP) final rule," including meaningful outdoor access for organic chickens and other animal welfare improvements. The Secretary "directed the National Organic Program to begin a rulemaking to address this statutory interpretation and to include a proposal to disallow the use of porches as outdoor space in organic production," and make other improvements to the original rule.
"After 4 years of hard-fought litigation, the Biden administration is recognizing that the Trump withdrawal decision was inconsistent with organic standards and principles. This is a major victory for all those who care about a meaningful organic label," said Amy van Saun, senior attorney at Center for Food Safety (CFS) and counsel in the litigation. "Finally, USDA will close the loophole allowing factory farms to produce 'organic' eggs and chicken, and level the playing field for real organic farmers already providing high welfare to their animals."
In January 2017, the Obama USDA published the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practice (OLPP) rule to improve animal welfare standards on farms producing organic meat, particularly requiring more space and outdoor access for egg-laying hens and chickens. Despite overwhelming support for the standards by the organic community, the Trump USDA withdrew the rule in 2018. In response, CFS filed a lawsuit challenging the withdrawal of the rule, currently in settlement discussions. Now, the Biden USDA is committing to reinstating the rule designed to strengthen the minimum requirements for the care and well-being of animals on organic farms and reaffirming its authority to set animal welfare standards in the National Organic Program. USDA will publish the rule for notice and comment, allowing for potential improvements to the OLPP.
"Consumer trust in the USDA Certified Organic label is vital and assures the success of the organic seal in the marketplace. Reinstating the organic animal welfare rule is a huge victory in securing the trust of consumers and farmers alike who expect meaningful and consistent standards for animal welfare under the Organic label," said Abby Youngblood, executive director at the National Organic Coalition, a plaintiff in the case.
CFS and allies sued the Trump USDA in March 2018. The Trump administration initially claimed the organizations lacked legal standing to challenge the withdrawal decision. In August 2018, a federal court rejected these arguments. The Court held that the withdrawal of the rule that set organic animal welfare standards injures the organizations' members because it "undermines the organic label" for consumers. In 2019, a federal court again sided with CFS and allies, ruling that USDA could not hide communications and documents that led to the controversial withdrawal. The case is currently stayed for settlement discussions.
"We're thrilled the Biden administration will reissue the organics rule and we urge them to do so as soon as possible to improve the lives of millions of farm animals," said Peter Brandt, managing attorney for Farm Animals at The Humane Society of the United States, a plaintiff in the case. "Like laws in California and many other states, the rule ensured that pigs, chickens, and other farm animals could not be tightly confined, and it closed a loophole that allowed large poultry companies to skirt the law by using skimpy screened-in porches to satisfy outdoor access requirements."
The OLPP rule was the culmination of over a decade of work by organic stakeholders and the National Organic Standards Board. Most notably, it ensured adequate space and outdoor access for organic poultry by establishing clear and enforceable minimum spacing requirements and specifying the quality of outdoor space that must be provided. It also clarified outdoor access for other organic animals, like cows, and prohibited inhumane physical alterations, like de-beaking and tail docking. The Trump administration delayed the final rule's effective date three times, and then formally withdrew it. USDA claimed the animal care regulations could not be issued because the agency lacked the authority to regulate practices such as animal space and preventative health care for livestock under the organic label.
"We are glad the court has cleared the way for the National Organic Program to finally align with the expectations of consumers. Confusing consumers is a hallmark of industrial animal agriculture, and restoring the intended meaning of the organic label is a welcome step toward increasing transparency," said Cristina Stella, managing attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, a plaintiff in the case.
By gutting the rule, the Trump administration made a complete reversal of the legal and policy positions that the USDA has held for 28 years, since the inception of organic, and what organic consumers and farmers believe: that organic standards do include considerations of livestock care and welfare. It also claimed that the regulations would be costly, despite its own economic analysis finding only minor costs.
Represented by CFS legal counsel, the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Animal Legal Defense Fund, Center for Food Safety, Center for Environmental Health, Cultivate Oregon, International Center for Technology Assessment, the Humane Society of the United States, and the National Organic Coalition, nonprofits with missions that include protecting the integrity of the organic label.
Center for Food Safety's mission is to empower people, support farmers, and protect the earth from the harmful impacts of industrial agriculture. Through groundbreaking legal, scientific, and grassroots action, we protect and promote your right to safe food and the environment. CFS's successful legal cases collectively represent a landmark body of case law on food and agricultural issues.
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Brazilian Supreme Court Delivers 'Historic Victory' to Indigenous Peoples
The court ruled against the Big Ag-backed "time limit trick," which would have only recognized Indigenous land claims if the group could prove they were living in a given territory on October 5, 1988.
Sep 22, 2023
In a major victory for Indigenous rights, Brazil's Supreme Federal Court rejected an argument Thursday that could have forced hundreds of thousands from their ancestral lands.
The so-called "time limit trick," backed by the nation's powerful agricultural interests, would have only recognized Indigenous land claims if the group could prove they were living in a given territory on October 5, 1988, the day the current Brazilian constitution was signed, as Survival International explained. The proposed rule ignored the fact that Brazil's military dictatorship displaced many Indigenous groups before it finally ended in 1985, The Guardianpointed out.
"I'm shaking," Jéssica Nghe Mum Priprá of the Xokleng-Laklano Indigenous group toldThe Associated Press while celebrating the news. "It took a while, but we did it. It's a very beautiful and strong feeling. Our ancestors are present—no doubt about it."
"The Supreme Court has shown that it cares about our lives and that it's against genocide."
The particular case the nation's highest court heard Thursday involved a land dispute in the state of Santa Catarina, Reuters reported. The Xokleng people were driven from much of their traditional lands in the state during the 1950s, when Brazil sold the land to tobacco farmers, the outlet explained in 2021. Santa Catarina then used the 1988 time limit to push more members of the Xokleng group out of a national park, prompting the current dispute.
"Before they killed us with guns, now they kill us with the stroke of a pen," former chief João Paté told Reuters in 2021.
However, the court on Thursday ruled 9-2 in favor of the Xokleng.
"Areas occupied by Indigenous people and areas that are linked to the ancestry and tradition of Indigenous peoples have constitutional protection, even if they are not demarcated," Justice Luiz Fux said.
The only two dissenting judges were appointed by right-wing former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who supported extractive industries at the expense of Indigenous rights.
The court also said that the decision had "general repercussion" status, meaning it would apply to other rulings involving Indigenous land claims.
"This is a momentous, historic victory for Brazil's Indigenous peoples, and a massive defeat for the agribusiness lobby," Survival International research and advocacy director Fiona Watson said in a statement, adding that a broad application of the time limit trick would have threatened many Indigenous groups in the country, among them the uncontacted Kawahiva.
"It was all part of a devastating assault on Brazil's Indigenous peoples and the Amazon rainforest, so this rejection of it is hugely important, not only for Indigenous peoples, but for the global fight against climate change too," she said.
Indigenous peoples gathered in Brasilia celebrated the news with dancing and weeping, The Guardian reported, as did those following the case from their homes in the Amazon region.
"We're crying with joy," Aty Guasu, an organization representing the Guarani group, said in a statement translated by Survival International. "Today we're going to sing the song of life and dance the dance of joy. The Supreme Court has shown that it cares about our lives and that it's against genocide. It has listened to the cry of the Indigenous peoples of Brazil."
National Indigenous rights group APIB also welcomed the decision, but said that there were other pending threats to Indigenous rights.
"We have indeed emerged victorious from the time frame thesis, but there is still much to be done," the group's executive coordinator Dinamam Tuxá said in a statement.
Tuxá pointed to a bill currently in the Senate that would only allow new reservations in land occupied by Indigenous groups as of 1988, as Reuters described it. While the court decision may make this provision harder to pass, the bill would also ease the way for mining, farming, dams, and transportation projects in Indigenous territory, AP explained.
"We remain mobilized," Tuxá said. "We continue to fight because we need to ensure and protect the rights of Indigenous peoples."
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Democratic Senators Sound Alarm Over Koch-Backed Plot to 'Eviscerate' Regulatory State
"For years, regulated interests have funded a full-scale campaign to delegitimize and dismantle federal regulations."
Sep 22, 2023
Hours before ProPublicarevealed new details about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' relationship with the Koch network, a group of Democratic senators filed a brief on Thursday warning that Koch-backed entities are closely involved in an upcoming case that could further gut the federal government's regulatory power—and enhance the strength of the conservative-dominated high court.
The case in question is Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which stems from a New Jersey-based fishing company's challenge to a law requiring certain fishing boats to carry federal compliance monitors to enforce regulations.
Loper Bright Enterprises specifically objected to an interpretation of federal law by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which said the Magnuson-Stevens Act allows the agency to require industry to pay the costs of the monitors.
The dispute over an obscure federal statute has since exploded into a matter of great interest to industry groups and environmentalists, with the latter warning that if the Supreme Court sides with the plaintiffs, it will be much more difficult for federal agencies to implement climate regulations.
Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) echoed that concern and spotlighted the attention the case has attracted from right-wing and corporate-funded groups.
"This case is the product of a decades-long effort by pro-corporate interests to eviscerate the federal government's regulatory apparatus, to the detriment of the American people," the lawmakers wrote, noting that a number of groups connected to the Koch network and other powerful right-wing organizations have submitted briefs in support of the plaintiffs in Loper v. Raimondo.
"For example, amici The Buckeye Institute, Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Landmark Legal Foundation, Mountain States Legal Foundation, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, New Civil Liberties Alliance, and Pacific Legal Foundation have all received hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of dollars from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund—two donor-advised funds that allow ultra-wealthy interests to direct funding anonymously."
"The Buckeye Institute, Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, New Civil Liberties Alliance, and Pacific Legal Foundation
have also received substantial funding from the Koch family foundations—another top-ten funder for the climate change counter-movement," the senators added.
"The court should proceed cautiously before contributing to their sought-for degradation of our American regulatory system."
At the center of Loper v. Raimondo is the so-called Chevron doctrine, a decades-old administrative law principle that says courts should defer to a federal agency's "reasonable" interpretation of a statute when the law's language is ambiguous.
The plaintiffs in the case and their corporate-backed supporters have called on the Supreme Court to either weaken the Chevron doctrine or overrule it entirely.
In its amicus brief in the case, the Cato Institute—which was co-founded by billionaire oil tycoon Charles Koch—declares that the Chevron doctrine is "unconstitutional and ahistorical" and has "wreaked havoc in the lower courts upon people and businesses."
The Democratic senators counter in their brief that the Chevron doctrine has been critical in "allowing Congress to rely on agency capacity and subject-matter expertise to help carry out Congress' broad policy objectives."
"Administrative regulations reined in dangerous industry activities," the senators added, "and our society became safer and more prosperous."
A ruling that effectively casts the principle aside, the lawmakers argued, "would not just conflict with Congress' well-established policymaking desires; it would erode the separation of powers by shifting policymaking power from Congress and the executive to the unaccountable judiciary."
The brief was submitted a day before ProPublicareported that Thomas, one of the justices poised to rule on Loper v. Raimondo, has attended at least two donor events for the Koch network during his time on the Supreme Court.
ProPublica noted that Thomas used to support the Chevron doctrine but has changed his position in recent years amid a growing corporate onslaught against the regulatory principle.
The Democratic senators stressed in their brief that "the assault in this case on the regulatory system is not an isolated effort."
"For years, regulated interests have funded a full-scale campaign to delegitimize and dismantle federal regulations,” the lawmakers wrote. "The court should proceed cautiously before contributing to their sought-for degradation of our American regulatory system."
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Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner Ramzi bin al-Shibh Unfit for 9/11 Trial, Says Military Judge
"This decision by the military judge today does mark the first time that the United States has formally acknowledged the CIA torture program produced profound and prolonged psychological harm," said al-Shibh's lawyer.
Sep 22, 2023
A U.S. military judge on Thursday found Guantánamo Bay prisoner Ramzi bin al-Shibh—who stands accused of being a key 9/11 organizer—unfit to stand trial because he suffers from mental illness his attorney says was caused by CIA torture years ago.
Air Force Col. Matthew McCall severed al-Shibh, a 51-year-old Yemeni, from the conspiracy case involving four other defendants who allegedly organized the cell of militants in Hamburg, Germany who hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 and flew it into the north tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan on September 11, 2001. Al-Shibh had been charged as an accomplice in the case.
"This decision by the military judge today does mark the first time that the United States has formally acknowledged that the CIA torture program produced profound and prolonged psychological harm," David Bruck, al-Shibh's lead defense attorney, told reporters at Guantánamo Bay on Thursday evening. "This is exactly what the CIA promised would not happen."
McCall's ruling—which does not directly attribute torture as the cause of al-Shibh's afflictions—came after a three-member military "sanity board" diagnosed the defendant with post-traumatic stress disorder with secondary psychotic features and persecutory delusional disorder. This, the board said, renders him "unable to understand the nature of the proceedings against him or cooperate intelligently in his defense."
According toLawdragon editor-in-chief John Ryan:
Al-Shibh has long claimed that the detention facility guard force has subjected him to noises and vibrations, continuing his torture from CIA black sites... In recent years, his lawyers have also claimed that al-Shibh feels stabbing and other painful sensations that he experiences as directed invisibly at parts of his body. The government has denied the allegations.
"The totality of the facts demonstrates an accused who is wholly focused on his delusions," McCall wrote in his ruling, according to The New York Times. "Again and again, he focuses his counsel's work on stopping his delusional harassment, (which) demonstrates the impairment of his ability to assist in his defense."
Military prosecutor Clayton Trivett Jr. acknowledged that al-Shibh is delusional but insisted "he has the capacity to participate" in his defense, and that his refusal to do so is "really just a choice."
Citing al-Shibh's cooperation with his defense team, Trivett added that "this does not look like someone who is incompetent."
While McCall ordered pretrial proceedings to continue Friday for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—the alleged mastermind of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on 9/11—as well as three co-defendants, what comes next for al-Shibh is unknown.
All five of the 9/11 defendants—Mohammed, his nephew Ammar al-Baluchi, Walid bin Attash, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, and al-Shibh—were captured in Pakistan in late 2002 and early 2003 before being turned over to the United States. Hassan bin Attash, who was captured with bin al-Shibh in Karachi, has testified that they were both sent via extraordinary rendition to the notorius "Salt Pit" outside Kabul, Afghanistan, where suspected militant Gul Rahman was tortured to death in November 2002.
Like Rahman, al-Shibh says he was shackled naked to a ceiling in a painful "stress position" for days on end. He was then reportedly sent to Jordan, where one witness told Human Rights Watch he was subjected to "electric shocks, long periods of sleep deprivation, forced nakedness, and being made to sit on sticks and bottles."
Al-Shibh told the International Committee of the Red Cross that he was kept naked and shackled to the ceiling for a week at a black site in Poland, where he was also deprived of solid food for three to four weeks.
According to the CIA's own documents:
The interrogation plan proposed that... al-Shibh would be subjected to "sensory dislocation." The proposed sensory dislocation included shaving al-Shibh's head and face, exposing him to loud noise in a white room with white lights, keeping him "unclothed and subjected to uncomfortably cool temperatures," and shackling him "hand and foot with arms outstretched over his head (with his feet firmly on the floor and not allowed to support his weight with his arms)".
The CIA torture plan also included near-constant interrogations, slamming into walls, hard slaps to the face and abdomen, stress positions, sleep deprivation beyond 72 hours, and the interrupted drowning torture known as waterboarding.
Al-Shibh was also held at a black site in Morocco for three-and-a-half months, where Moroccan agents allegedly tortured him under CIA supervision. Moroccan interrogators videotaped some of the interrogations and handed the footage over to the CIA.
This isn't the first time that torture played a role in derailing the prosecution of an alleged 9/11 plotter. In 2009, Susan J. Crawford, the top George W. Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantánamo prisoners to trial, declared that the U.S. "tortured" Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged would-be 20th 9/11 hijacker, and declined to green light his prosecution.
Col. Stuart Crouch, a Guantánamo prosecutor whose Marine Corps buddy was a pilot on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11, refused to prosecute Mohamedou Ould Slahi—who allegedly helped organize the plane's hijacking—because he was tortured.
Additionally, numerous Guantánamo officials have resigned over what they claim is a corrupt military commission system. Former lead prosecutor Col. Morris Davis—who called trials there "rigged from the start"—stepped down in 2007, claiming he was told by top Bush lawyer Jim Haynes that acquittals were unacceptable.
"I now understand that the commissions were doomed from the start. We used new rules of evidence and allowed evidence regardless of how it was obtained."
At least four other military prosecutors—Maj. Robert Preston, Capt. John Carr, Capt. Carrie Wolf and Darrel J. Vandeval—requested to be removed from the military commissions because they also felt that the proceedings were unfair.
In 2021, seven out of eight members of the military jury convened to hear the case against Guantánamo detainee and alleged terrorist plotter Majid Khan recommended total clemency after the defendant testified how he endured torture including rape, being hung from a ceiling beam, and being waterboarded while he was held at a CIA black site in Afghanistan.
Earlier this year, Ted Olson—the former Bush administration solicitor-general who then argued against basic legal rights for Guantánamo Bay prisoners and defended their indefinite detention and torture—made a stunning admission, saying the military commissions don't work and should be shut down, and the government should strike plea deals with 9/11 defendants held at the prison.
"In retrospect, we made two mistakes in dealing with the detained individuals at Guantánamo," Olson wrote. "First, we created a new legal system out of whole cloth. I now understand that the commissions were doomed from the start. We used new rules of evidence and allowed evidence regardless of how it was obtained."
Defense and prosecution attorneys had been negotiating a possible plea deal that would have spared the defendants the prospect of execution. However, earlier this month the White House said that President Joe Biden would not approve or deny such a request because he "was unsettled about accepting terms for the plea from those responsible for the deadliest assault on the United States since Pearl Harbor," according to The Associated Press.
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