United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local No. 227 v. Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), through its Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), is responsible for inspecting poultry products at the nation’s poultry processing establishments. In 2014, FSIS adopted the “New Poultry Inspection System” (NPIS). After considering medical evidence that faster line speeds harm workers by increasing their risk of injury, FSIS retained a line-speed limit of 140 birds per minute (bpm), rejecting a proposal to increase the maximum line speed to 175 bpm.
In 2018, FSIS changed course. After considering an industry request to lift all line-speed restrictions in NPIS plants, FSIS implemented a waiver program through which individual plants could apply for a waiver of the 2014 rule to allow the plant to operate at 175 bpm. FSIS subsequently granted waivers to several NPIS facilities, including 10 plants at which members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) work.
In July 2020, Public Citizen filed a lawsuit against USDA on behalf of UFCW and five of its locals. The complaint alleged that USDA violated the Administrative Procedure Act by adopting the waiver program without undertaking notice-and-comment rulemaking procedures, by failing to consider adequately the impact of worker safety or the agency’s prior views on the connection between line speeds and worker safety, and by improperly attempting to justify its waiver program as a way to experiment with new technologies. USDA filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that UFCW lacked standing, but the court rejected that argument and denied USDA’s motion. USDA then moved to remand the case to the agency to allow it time to reconsider the waiver program and, in January 2022, the court granted that motion and stayed the case to allow USDA time to reconsider the program.
In April 2023, USDA terminated the challenged waiver program and established a new program that includes an agency-sponsored study of worker safety. We then voluntarily dismissed the case.