21 U.S.C. § 679 — Application of Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act

(a) Authorities under food, drug, and cosmetic provisions unaffected. This applies despite any other law, including a specific provision of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. This chapter does not take away any authority that the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act already had before December 15, 1967. That earlier law keeps its full power alongside this one. (b) Enforcement proceedings; detainer authority of representatives of Secretary of Health and Human Services. This chapter gives certain officials the power to detain products. Detaining means holding them back from sale, under section 672. That detainer power also applies to authorized representatives of the Secretary of Health and Human Services. They use it to enforce the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. It covers carcasses, or parts of them, and meat or meat food products. This applies to cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, or horses. It applies when the product is outside a place where this chapter's inspections are happening. For this purpose, the first mention of "the Secretary" in section 672 means the Secretary of Health and Human Services, not the Secretary of Agriculture.

The record indicates that this section originated as part of the Meat Inspection Act of March 4, 1907 (ch. 2907), though the specific text of § 409 was not part of the original 1907 enactment but was added later, on December 15, 1967, by section 16 of Public Law 90-201, 81 Stat. 600. The source credit further shows that the section has since been amended twice: by Public Law 96-88, section 509(b), on October 17, 1979, and by Public Law 111-31, division A, title I, section 103(o), on June 22, 2009. The amendment count of three reflects the addition itself together with these two subsequent revisions. Public Law 90-201, enacted in December 1967, is generally understood to be the Wholesome Meat Act, which strengthened federal meat inspection requirements and clarified relationships between federal meat inspection law and other federal regulatory schemes, including food and drug law. Provisions like this one, addressing how the meat inspection statute interacts with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, are commonly understood to reflect Congress's effort to prevent gaps or conflicts between overlapping regulatory authorities administered by different federal agencies. The 1979 and 2009 amendments likely reflect subsequent reorganizations of federal health and agriculture agency responsibilities, but the record here does not establish the specific legislative purpose behind those particular changes. Beyond this general understanding of the 1967 Act's broader aims, the record does not establish more specific reasons Congress included this particular provision.