21 U.S.C. § 609 — Examination of animals and food products thereof, slaughtered and prepared during nighttime

This section requires inspection of certain slaughtered animals and their food products at night, not just during the day. The Secretary must arrange for examination and inspection of all "amenable species." These are the animal types covered by this inspection law. Inspection also covers the food products made from them. This applies to establishments already described elsewhere in this law that slaughter or process these animals for commercial purposes. The key rule is about timing. If an establishment slaughters amenable species, or prepares food products from them, during the nighttime, the Secretary must make sure inspection happens then too. Inspectors cannot limit their work to daytime hours. In short, whenever slaughtering or food preparation happens at night, government inspection must be conducted then too. This ensures nighttime production gets the same oversight as daytime production, with no gap in coverage based on the clock.

The record. According to the source credit, this section originated as the seventh paragraph of an act of Congress dated March 4, 1907 (ch. 2907, title I), 34 Stat. 1262. It was subsequently renumbered as section 9 and amended by Public Law 90–201, enacted December 15, 1967, with the amending provisions spanning three separate subsections of that act. The source credit further indicates two later amendments: one by Public Law 99–641 in 1986, and another by Public Law 109–97 in 2005. In total, the record reflects an original 1907 enactment and three subsequent rounds of amendment over nearly a century. Historical context. The 1907 act referenced here corresponds to the era of federal meat inspection legislation commonly associated with responses to public concerns about food safety and sanitary conditions in slaughtering and meatpacking establishments during that period. Such statutes are generally understood to have been part of a broader early-20th-century federal effort to establish inspection regimes for meat intended for commerce. Beyond this general historical association, the record here does not establish the specific legislative purpose behind requiring inspection during nighttime operations, nor does it document the particular concerns that led to the 1967, 1986, or 2005 amendments. Any more detailed account of congressional intent for this specific provision would be speculative and is not supported by the material provided.