21 U.S.C. § 608
Section 608 · Sanitary inspection and regulation of slaughtering and packing establishments; rejection of adulterated meat or meat food products
Amended 3 times on record
Applied in 15 court decisions — leading case United States v. Nova Scotia Food Products Corp. (1977)
Most recently applied in Craten v. Foster Poultry Farms Inc. (January 2018)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
The Secretary shall cause to be made, by experts in sanitation or by other competent inspectors, such inspection of all slaughtering, meat canning, salting, packing, rendering, or similar establishments in which amenable species are slaughtered and the meat and meat food products thereof are prepared for commerce as may be necessary to inform himself concerning the sanitary conditions of the same, and to prescribe the rules and regulations of sanitation under which such establishments shall be maintained; and where the sanitary conditions of any such establishment are such that the meat or meat food products are rendered adulterated, he shall refuse to allow said meat or meat food products to be labeled, marked, stamped or tagged as “inspected and passed.”
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Codification
Section was formerly classified to section 76 of this title.
Amendments
2005—Pub. L. 109–97 substituted “amenable species” for “cattle, sheep, swine, goats, horses, mules, and other equines”.
1967—Pub. L. 90–201, §§3, 12(a), (f), struck out “interstate or foreign” before “commerce” and “of Agriculture” after “Secretary”, included horses, mules, and other equines in the list of animals, and substituted “adulterated” for “unclean, unsound, unhealthful, unwholesome, or otherwise unfit for human food”, respectively.
Effective Date of 2005 Amendment
Amendment by Pub. L. 109–97 effective the day after 120 days after Nov. 10, 2005, see section 798(b) of Pub. L. 109–97, set out as a note under section 601 of this title.
Effective Date of 1967 Amendment
Amendment by Pub. L. 90–201 effective Dec. 15, 1967, except that with respect to equines (other than horses) and their carcasses and parts thereof, meat, and meat food products thereof, amendment effective upon expiration of sixty days after Dec. 15, 1967, see section 20(b) of Pub. L. 90–201, set out as an Effective Date note under section 601 of this title.