21 U.S.C. § 644 — Regulation of transactions, transportation, or importation of 4–D animals to prevent use as human food

The record. The source credit indicates that this section was added to title II of the Act of March 4, 1907 (ch. 2907), by section 14 of Public Law 90-201, enacted December 15, 1967, and published at 81 Stat. 594. The 1907 act itself is the original meat-inspection statute, but the specific provision codified here as § 644 did not exist until the 1967 enactment inserted it as § 204 of that title. The source credit reflects a single amendment event—the 1967 addition—and does not show any subsequent amendments to this section's text. Historical context. Public Law 90-201 is commonly identified as the Wholesome Meat Act of 1967, legislation generally understood to have strengthened federal oversight of meat inspection, including gaps between federal and state inspection standards and the handling of animals not intended for slaughter. The broader Act is often described as responding to public and congressional concern, in the mid-1960s, about unsanitary or unsafe conditions in meat processing that fell outside existing federal inspection requirements. Consistent with that general understanding, a provision restricting commerce in dead, dying, disabled, or diseased animals would fit the Act's commonly cited purpose of preventing unfit animal remains from entering the human food supply. However, the record does not establish the specific legislative reasoning, debates, or findings that led Congress to include this particular provision, and no more specific intent should be inferred beyond this general historical association.