The emotional fight over the resumption of horse slaughter in the United States has moved to an appeals court after a federal judge rejected arguments by animal rights groups that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) failed to conduct environmental reviews.
USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) acted lawfully when it adopted a directive related to horse slaughter and issued grants of inspection, U.S. District Judge Christine Armijo ruled on Nov. 1.
Armijo's ruling has been appealed. On Nov. 4, at the request of animal rights groups including The Humane Society of the United States, two judges with the Denver-based 10th Circuit temporarily prohibited FSIS from dispatching inspectors to horse slaughter facilities in Iowa (Responsible Transportation, LLC), Missouri (Rains Natural Meats) and New Mexico (Valley Meat Company, LLC).
Without the emergency order, horse slaughter would have potentially resumed for the first time in more than six years.
Animal rights groups and individual litigants—including Chief David Bald Eagle of the Minikoju Band of the Cheyenne River Tribe Lakota Indians—alleged in a lawsuit that FSIS failed to follow the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) before it granted inspections for horse slaughter and issued a directive that related to such inspections and drug residue testing for the equines.
Armijo, the federal judge in Albuquerque, disagreed, finding that FSIS complied with the relevant regulations. She also agreed with FSIS that NEPA didn't apply to its granting of inspections because the agency's actions were not discretionary. Government lawyers previously argued FSIS lacked the authority to impose environmental conditions or deny a proposal for an inspection on environmental grounds.
