Meat Labeling and the Public's Right to Know: Important Lessons From Environmental Disclosure Laws

• Author: Paige M. Tomaselli
• Pages: 69-88

69

Chapter 3:

Meat Labeling and the

Public’s Right to Know:

Important Lessons From

Environmental Disclosure Laws

Paige M. Tomaselli

I. e Public Right to Know and Animal Factories: An Overview ............71

II. Two Successful Environmental Disclosure Laws ....................................75

A. Proposition 65 ................................................................................76

B. Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.............79

III. e FMIA, PPIA, and Preemption ........................................................82

IV. What Meat Disclosure Laws Can Glean From Environmental

Disclosure Laws ....................................................................................85

Conclusion .....................................................................................................88

Upton Sinclair was a household name in the early 1900s. His exposé,

e Jungle, revealed unsanitary conditions in meat processing plants

and the unwholesomeness of the U.S. meat supply. e public

became  xated on food safet y. e Jungle inuenced Congress to enact the

(1) Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA),1 which sought to ensure t hat meat

and meat food products distributed to the public are wholesome, not adulter-

ated, and properly marked, labeled, and packaged, and (2) the Pure Food and

Drug Act, which was the nation’s rst federal food labeling law and precursor

to the modern Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA).2 ese two

laws opened the channels of communication between food producers and the

public, and provided the public with some of the information necessary to

formulate implicit consent to consume meat and meat products.

1. Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA), 21 U.S.C. §§601-695.

2. Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA), 21 U.S.C. §§301-399.

70 What Can Animal Law Learn From Environmental Law?

More tha n 100 years have passed since e Jungle was published. Nev-

ertheless, the modern FMIA and FFDCA remain inadequate tools for dis-

pensing critical i nformation about meat and meat production. e labels

that the FMIA a nd FFDC A require do not speak to how the animals were

raised, whether t hey were admi nistered antibiotics or other pha rmaceuti-

cals, whether they were conned, or what impact the facilities have on pub-

lic health or the environment. e disclosures mandated by statute simply

fail to provide t he public with a complete and accurate picture. e public

is surprisingly unaware of—and of ten unable to nd—critical information

about meat.

Yet the public has a funda mental right to certain information about food.

is right is manifest in the public’s constitutionally protected listener’s

rights to receive truth ful a nd non-misleading information. As the Supreme

Court explained in 1976, commercial information is crucial to public choice:

“[P]eople will perceive t heir own best interests if only they are well enough

informed, and [] the best means to that end is to open the cha nnels of com-

munication rat her tha n to close them.”3 L ater that yea r, the United States

Circuit Court for the Sixth Circuit recognized that Ohio students’ First

Amendment rights to receive information were violated when the school

board removed books from the school library that it found distastef ul.4 Cit-

ing the Supreme Court, the Sixth Circu it Court held: “We believe t hat the

language just quoted, plus [] recent cases . . . serve to establish rmly . . . the

First Amendment right to know . . . .”5

e First Amendment right to know is now rmly established in environ-

mental law. C alifornia’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act 6

(commonly known and referred to here as “Proposition 65”) and the Emer-

gency Planning and Communit y Right-to-Know Act7 (EPCRA) are t wo

examples of environmental disclosure laws that provide the public with noti-

cation of potential exposure to chemicals that could cause cancer, reproduc-

tive a ilments, or other health problems. While successful on many fronts,

both Proposition 65 and EPCRA fail to satisfy the public’s First Amendment

right to know important information about meat and meat products.

3. Virginia State Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U.S. 748, 770

(1976).

4. e First Amendment applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. See, e.g., Bigelow v.

Virginia, 421 U.S. 809, 811 (1975); Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, 160 (1939).

5. Minarcini v. Strongsville City Sch. Dist., 541 F.2d 577, 583 (6th Cir. 1976).

6. California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, C. H  S C §25249.5-

25249.13 (West 2014).

7. Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), 42 U.S.C. §§11001-11050.