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WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) – An animal rights group has claimed a significant court victory in Washington, D.C., where the district’s highest court has ruled it can proceed with a lawsuit against Hormel.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund had no standing to sue the company and even if it did, its claims were preempted by federal law, the D.C. Superior Court had ruled. But the D.C. Court of Appeals overturned that decision on Sept. 2.
D.C.’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act provides public interest organizations with the ability to bring suit under it, while the claims made by the ALDF regarding Hormel’s “Natural Choice” meat products are not preempted, the court found.
The suit will resume past the summary judgment phase and toward trial in the Superior Court, which had ruled ALDF is not organized to promote the interests of Hormel meat products but instead works for the rights of the animals being consumed. In the trial court’s eyes, that meant ALDF was not a public interest organization with standing to sue under the CPPA.
“ALDF believes that consumers will alter their meat purchasing and consumption habits if they are aware of the realities about how their meat is sourced,” Judge Josh Deahl wrote.
“That it advocates on behalf of consumers only in service of some predominant purpose of promoting animal welfare is not fatal to its suit. Purposes regularly fall short of end goals.
“For example, one’s purpose for going to the gym might be to get in shape, even if doing so is only in service of some overarching goal(s) of living longer, attracting a partner, or the like.”
Hormel started selling its Natural Choice line of deli meats in 2006, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved labels indicating the products were natural, all natural, 100% natural and containing no preservatives.
An advertising campaign nine years later used terms like clean, honest, higher standards and wholesome.
ALDF says pigs slaughtered to make the products had been subjected to “egregious and stomach-churning” treatment, making the labels and ad campaign false. ALDF had investigated a pig farm that supplied Hormel, then began an advocacy campaign online. Included in its attack on the company was the lawsuit it filed in D.C.
“The crux of its complaint is that Hormel’s Natural Choice campaign misleads consumers into believing that the animals slaughtered to make Natural Choice deli meats were treated humanely, even though they were not,” Deahl wrote.
“The ads also tout the absence of preservatives and nitrates, even though the meats contain naturally-occurring nitrates from celery juice and cherry juice powder.”