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Amy van Saun, Center for Food Safety, 585-747-0151, avansaun@centerforfoodsafety.
Zach Corrigan, Food & Water Watch, zcorrigan@fwwatch.org, 202-683-2451
WASHINGTON - National food-policy and consumer organizations filed a motion asking for a federal court to rule in a case that could have major ramifications for food safety.
The case, filed in 2020 (Center for Food Safety, et al. v. Sonny Perdue, No.4:20-cv-00256-JSW (N.D. Cal) ) concerns the implementation of the USDA's New Swine Inspection System (NSIS), a Trump administration rule that greatly undermines the ability of federal inspectors to protect consumers from foodborne illnesses.
In the brief to the US District Court for the Northern District of California, the Center for Food Safety, Food & Water Watch and the Humane Farming Association argue that the 2019 rules violate the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA), one of our country's cornerstone food safety laws.
"The Trump administration implemented this outrageous self-policing initiative that hands over inspection duties to meat companies themselves -- even though 48 million Americans get sick every year due to foodborne illness," said Zach Corrigan, Senior Attorney for Food & Water Watch and lead counsel in the case. "Enough is enough. We are asking a federal court to throw out the unlawful rules the Biden administration continues to defend."
The NSIS program relies in large part on meat company employees conducting inspections instead of government inspectors, a radical departure from long-established practice. The brief argues that this raises significant dangers to public health: for example, an examination of USDA data showed that the plants that had piloted the new system had significantly more regulatory violations for fecal and digestive matter on carcasses than traditional plants. Since the government projects widespread adoption of the NSIS rules (plants producing over 90 percent of the U.S. pork supply), these policies will greatly impact consumers.
"The powerful meat processing industry wants to turn back time to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, but Congress required federal inspectors to ensure that meat processing is safe for the public," said Amy van Saun, senior attorney with Center for Food Safety. "USDA's new rules gut that assurance of safety and allow the fox to guard the henhouse."
"Turning over meat inspection duties to the regulated industry flies in the face of federal law and consumer safety," said Bradley Miller, national director of the Humane Farming Association. "The Biden Administration's refusal to reverse this Trump era rollback poses a significant danger to public health and animal welfare."
The industry push for 'self-regulation' goes back decades, and in the 1990s the USDA began moving in that direction. This eventually led to the creation of a pilot program; 15 years later, government investigators found major problems, including lack of proper oversight and persistent regulatory violations. Whistleblower employees also came forward to document serious violations, and called for a halt to the program.
Despite these issues, USDA has continued to move forward with the NSIS program. As the filing documents, a Clemons Food Group plant in Coldwater, Michigan, was granted a waiver in 2017 so that it could begin to operate with these relaxed inspection rules. Despite a series of well-documented and serious problems, USDA decided to allow the plant to continue operating under the NSIS rules.
The brief showed that employees in plants such as the one in Coldwater repeatedly could not perform newly assigned inspection tasks, such as slicing and feeling lymph nodes, that are critical to identify animal conditions and diseases. These are tasks that are usually the responsibility of trained federal USDA inspectors. Employees in these plants also regularly missed fecal matter on carcasses, contamination that contains dangerous pathogens that can make people sick. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates that 48 million people suffer from foodborne illness each year, while 128,000 people are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from it.
The motion notes the widespread opposition to the NSIS rules. The vast majority of the over 80,000 comments filed on the program -- from consumer groups, animal welfare groups, and dozens of members of Congress -- were critical of the proposal.
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
(202) 683-2500"If the Constitution doesn't apply to somebody who's lived in this country for 35 years and is a green-card holder... the Constitution doesn't apply to anybody who's been in this country for less time than him," said an attorney representing the scientist.
A permanent U.S. resident has been held in detention for the last week without apparent explanation and without access to legal representation, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
According to the Post, 40-year-old Tae Heung "Will" Kim was detained by immigration officials at the San Francisco International Airport on July 21 after returning from attending his brother's wedding in Korea. In the week since his detention, he has still not been released despite being a green-card holder who has lived in the United States since the age of five.
Eric Lee, an attorney representing Kim, said he has been unable to contact his client and that Kim's only past brush with the law came back in 2011 when he was ordered to perform community service over a minor marijuana possession charge in Texas.
A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seemed to suggest in a statement to the Post that this past instance of marijuana possession was enough justification to detain and deport Kim.
"If a green-card holder is convicted of a drug offense, violating their status, that person is issued a Notice to Appear and CBP coordinates detention space with ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations]," they said. "This alien is in ICE custody pending removal proceedings."
Lee told the Post that he reached out to CBP to ask whether his client had protections under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the United States Constitution that guarantee rights such as the right to an attorney. In response, the CBP official simply told Lee, "No."
"If the Constitution doesn't apply to somebody who's lived in this country for 35 years and is a green-card holder—and only left the country for a two-week vacation—that means [the government] is basically arguing that the Constitution doesn't apply to anybody who's been in this country for less time than him," Lee said.
Lee added that it would be particularly uncommon for immigration officials to deport his client based solely on a 2011 marijuana possession charge given that Kim had successfully petitioned to seal the offense from his public record after fulfilling his community service requirements. Because of this, Lee said that Kim's case should easily clear the waiver process that allows officials to overlook past minor offenses that could otherwise be used to justify stripping people of their permanent legal resident status.
Prior to his detention, Kim was pursuing a PhD at Texas A&M University, where he was doing research to help develop a vaccine against Lyme disease.
Immigration enforcement officials under the second Trump administration have been particularly aggressive in trying to deport students who are legally in the United States.
Turkish-born Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk was detained for months earlier this year after she was apparently targeted for writing an editorial in her student newspaper critical of the school's refusal to divest from Israel. Russian-born Harvard University scientist Kseniia Petrova, meanwhile, is currently facing deportation after she was charged with allegedly smuggling frog embryos into the United States.
Judge James Boasberg reportedly raised concerns that the Trump administration "would disregard rulings of federal courts," something the White House has done repeatedly.
The Trump Justice Department on Monday filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge for warning in early March that the president could spark a "constitutional crisis" by defying court orders—a concern that was swiftly validated.
The complaint against James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was announced by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who alleged on social media that Boasberg made "improper public comments" about President Donald Trump and his administration.
During a March gathering of the Judicial Conference—the federal judiciary's policymaking body—Boasberg reportedly raised colleagues' fears that "the administration would disregard rulings of federal courts leading to a constitutional crisis."
John Roberts, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, "expressed hope that would not happen and in turn no constitutional crisis would materialize," according to a memo obtained by The Federalist, a right-wing publication.
Days after the Judicial Conference gathering, the Trump administration ignored Boasberg's order to turn around deportation flights, prompting an ACLU attorney to warn, "I think we're getting very close" to a constitutional crisis.
Boasberg, an Obama appointee, later said there was probable cause to hold the Trump administration in contempt of court, concluding that the evidence demonstrated "a willful disregard" for the judge's order.
Boasberg's rulings against the Trump administration in the high-profile deportation case stemming from the president's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act have made the judge a target of the White House and its allies. Trump and some congressional Republicans have demanded that Boasberg be impeached.
Politico reported Monday that the Justice Department's complaint against Boasberg was signed by Chad Mizelle, Bondi's chief of staff.
"Mizelle argued that Boasberg's views expressed at the conference violated the 'presumption of regularity' that courts typically afford to the executive branch," Politico noted. "And the Bondi aide said that the administration has followed all court orders, though several lower courts have found that the administration defied their commands."
A Washington Post analysis published last week estimated that Trump officials have been accused of violating court orders in "a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration."
"The antitrust division has long worked to enforce the law to fight monopoly power, but these attorneys may have been fired for doing just that," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
The Trump Justice Department has removed two of its top antitrust officials amid infighting over the handling of merger enforcement, conflict that came to a head with the DOJ's strange and allegedly corrupt settlement with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks.
CBS News reported that Roger Alford, principal deputy assistant attorney general, and Bill Rinner, deputy assistant attorney general and head of merger enforcement, were fired for "insubordination" on Monday after being placed on administrative leave last week.
"There has been tension over the handling of investigations into T-Mobile, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and others," the outlet reported, citing unnamed sources.
The Wall Street Journal subsequently reported that the two officials—both deputies of Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater, the head of the DOJ's antitrust division—were terminated "after internal disagreements over how much discretion their division should have to police mergers and other business conduct that threatens competition."
News of Alford and Rinner's firings came amid growing scrutiny of the Justice Department's merger settlement with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks, an agreement that reportedly divided the DOJ internally.
The Capitol Forum reported last week that Justice Department leaders including Chad Mizelle, Attorney General Pam Bondi's chief of staff, "overruled" top antitrust officials who raised concerns about the settlement, Slater among them. HPE hired lobbyists with ties to the Trump White House to push for the deal, which allowed the merger to move forward pending a judge's review of the settlement.
MLex reported over the weekend that Mizelle placed Alford and Ginner on leave last week following "disagreements with higher-ups over a recent merger settlement in HPE-Juniper."
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who serves on the Senate Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights, called the firings "deeply concerning" and demanded answers from the Trump administration.
"The antitrust division has long worked to enforce the law to fight monopoly power, but these attorneys may have been fired for doing just that," Klobuchar wrote on social media.
Faiz Shakir, an adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wrote in response to the firings that "more and more people [are] taking notice that Trump is using his power to coddle the oligarchs."
"Major cases being settled, rather than fought out in trials," he wrote. "Nothing new being filed to fight major monopolies. Things like non-compete bans and click-to-cancel rules being overturned."
The American Prospect's David Dayen described the internal turmoil at the Trump DOJ as an apparent "effort to hijack antitrust powers on behalf of large corporations."
"This mess is about more than just a wireless back-office infrastructure merger," Dayen wrote, referring to the HPE-Juniper deal. "The antitrust division is actively overseeing cases against Google, Apple, Visa, Live Nation, RealPage, and more."
"If Slater is functionally not in control of the division, then cash and favor-trading will determine the outcomes for some of the biggest companies in the economy," Dayen added. "We're already seeing lenient enforcement at DOJ, with a deal between T-Mobile and UScellular approved. The precedent appears to be set: The right consultants paid the right amount of money can get you a sweetheart deal."