Meat-market defeat

Certain consumers and activists are celebrating the reinstatement of a California law that prohibits the use of sick and disabled animals in the human food supply, according to a press release from the Humane Society of the United States and Farm Sanctuary.

In late March, California’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a law that bans the use of sick and disabled animals—also known as “downed” animals—for human consumption.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the ban in 2009 in response to a lawsuit filed by the National Meat Association and American Meat Institute. A number of national animal-rights groups have since intervened in the lawsuit, claiming that downed animals are more likely to carry diseases and bacteria that can be deadly to humans such as mad cow disease, E. coli and salmonella.