Chicken farm. Photo by David Tadevosian/Shutterstock.com

Animal advocacy groups seeking to monitor allegations of factory-farm abuses have filed a federal lawsuit in the Western District of New York demanding that the U.S. Department of Agriculture divulge information on compliance with federal laws governing humane slaughter and poultry production.

The Animal Welfare Institute, an animal-rights advocacy group, and Farm Sanctuary, which has a farm in Watkins Glen, New York, on Thursday said in their complaint that the USDA should proactively post compliance documents online without being compelled by a Freedom of Information Act request.

The groups are represented by William Lawton of Meyer Glitzenstein & Eubanks in Washington, D.C.

“Our client has requested this information under FOIA many times for many years,” Lawton said. “Their experience has been that their FOIA requests are met with lengthy delays, which comprises the utility of the information that the agency ultimately releases.”

Plaintiffs said the USDA's failure to make those documents available infringes on transparency and the ability to monitor alleged mistreatment of animals. They said in the complaint that since a certain set of documents are frequently requested, the USDA is statutorily obligated to proactively make them available online without a FOIA request.

“Because these records fall within the category of documents that the agency is required under FOIA to post online and because the delays associated with prior FOIA requests which have compromised the utility of the information eventually released, this lawsuit to hold the agency accountable to its obligations under FOIA has proven necessary,” Lawton said.

The documents pertain to complaints and interviews about the humane treatment of animals on farms before slaughter. They specifically deal with compliance of the Poultry Products Inspection Act and the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, which were passed in 1957 and 1958, respectively.

The HMSA requires animals to be humanely handled and killed before being slaughtered in USDA-inspected slaughter plants. The PPIA requires sanitary practices in poultry processing facilities to avoid products becoming “adulterated.”

The plaintiffs believe the USDA should have to proactively make certain documents pertaining to those laws available online as soon as possible without a FOIA request because of an amendment to FOIA passed by Congress in 1996 and strengthened in 2016.

That law, according to the complaint, requires federal agencies to make certain records available online that have been released and “requested three or more times.” It basically requires agencies to post documents that are frequently requested.

Animal Welfare Institute and Farm Sanctuary argued in the complaint that since they, and other groups, have frequently requested documents pertaining to the two animal treatment laws, that the 1996 FOIA amendment should compel the USDA to publish them regularly without a formal request.

The documents they want, the groups argued, help them better keep track of which facilities are complying with the laws and which need to improve. That helps fuel their advocacy mission of higher standards for the treatment of animals, they said.

They are specifically seeking to make noncompliance records and memoranda of interview available to the public. The first are detailed reports that show when a facility has not complied with the HMSA and PPIA. The second is a written summary of an interview between an inspector with the Food Safety and Inspection Service and a facility.

Animal Welfare Institute and Farm Sanctuary sent a FOIA request to the USDA and FSIS in May asking them to proactively disclose the documents going forward. In July, the USDA sent the groups a copy of the documents they requested, but did not respond to the part of the FOIA request asking for proactive disclosure of the documents, according to the complaint.

The groups appealed the response to compel the agency to respond to their earlier request about making the documents proactively available going forward. According to their complaint, they did not hear back from the USDA and FSIS on the appeal.

They want the court to declare that the agency is not complying with FOIA and compel them to post the documents online proactively.

The USDA did not return a request for comment on the lawsuit.