Massachusetts Animal Containment Law Survives Court Scrutiny

A Massachusetts animal cruelty prevention law is constitutional and doesn’t intrude on Congress’s authority to regulate the meat industry, a federal judge ruled Monday.

The state bans the sale of meat derived from pigs that were confined in a “cruel manner.” The Federal Meat Inspection Act doesn’t preempt the state law because it only bans sales of meat from slaughterhouses that don’t comply with the law, consistent with US Supreme Court precedent, Judge William Young ruled in a case before the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

“Slaughterhouses may still operate in the same way they did previously—noncompliant ...