21 U.S.C. § 608 — Sanitary inspection and regulation of slaughtering and packing establishments; rejection of adulterated meat or meat food products

The Secretary must have sanitation experts or other qualified inspectors check certain establishments. This covers places that slaughter, can, salt, pack, or render meat, or do similar work with "amenable species" — animals covered by this law. It also covers places that prepare the meat and meat products of those animals for sale. The Secretary orders these inspections to learn about each place's sanitary conditions. Based on what inspectors find, the Secretary must write rules and regulations for keeping these establishments sanitary. The establishments must follow those rules to keep operating. If an establishment's sanitary conditions are bad enough that its meat or meat products become adulterated, the Secretary must act. The Secretary must refuse to let that meat or those products be labeled, marked, stamped, or tagged as "inspected and passed."

The record indicates that this section originated as the sixth paragraph of section 1 of the Act of March 4, 1907, chapter 2907, 34 Stat. 1262. The source credit shows that it was later renumbered as section 8 and amended by Public Law 90–201, sections 1, 3, and 12(a), (f), enacted December 15, 1967, and further amended by Public Law 109–97, title VII, section 798(a)(1), enacted November 10, 2005. Together these citations reflect a provision with roots in early twentieth-century federal law that was substantially reorganized and updated twice in the latter half of the twentieth century and again in the early twenty-first century. The 1907 Act is generally understood as part of the federal government's early response to public concern over unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry, a concern that had been heightened by contemporary exposés and investigations into slaughterhouse practices. The commonly cited purpose of the broader statute was to establish federal inspection of meat and meat food products moving in commerce, so as to prevent the sale of adulterated or misbranded goods and to protect public health. Beyond this general historical background, the record does not establish the specific legislative intent behind this particular provision or the reasons for its 1967 and 2005 amendments; any more detailed account of those changes would be speculative.