Court Opinion

ID: 9650568
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:44:19.390323+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:23.500329
License: Public Domain

SAWTELLE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I am unable to agree with the majority in the view that the saving provision of section 2 of the Food and Drugs Act protects from seizure shipments of decayed food in its “natural condition,” to use the expression reiterated by the appellee. The saving provision relates solely to articles “prepared or packed” according to the directions of the foreign purchaser; it does not authorize shipment of food inherently “adulterated” by being, according to section 8, “filthy, decomposed, or putrid.” That section defines the word “adulterated” as follows:
“For the purposes of sections 1 to 15, inclusive, of this title, an article shall be deemed to be adulterated; * * *
“Sixth. If it consists in whole or in part of a filthy, decomposed, or putrid animal or vegetable substance, or any portion of an animal unfit for food, whether. manufactured or not, or if it is the product of a diseased animal, or one that has died otherwise than by slaughter.”
The government is not quarreling with the method either of “packing” or “preparing” the figs; it is censuring a vice that inheres in the food itself, regardless of its “packing” or “preparation”; namely, its essential putridity.
The word “prepare” implies the intervention of human agency. It does not mean the mere permission that nature takes its course. Shipping rotten figs in their “natural condition” is not “preparing” or “packing” them. .
The test seems to be: Did the “preparing” or the “packing,” of itself, cause the condition to which the government is objecting?
In other words, did the “preparing” or the “packing” of the fruit result in its adulteration or decay? We are assuming, for the sake of the argument only, that such prepar*427ing and packing were done according to the instructions of the foreign purchaser.
If it should be found that the putrid condition of the figs was due to the method used in packing or preparing them, the saving provision referred to above applies, and the shipment is not subject to condemnation.
If, on the other hand, it is ascertained that the fruit was “adulterated” because of natural decay — in which the hand of man had no part — then the vice complained of may be said to be inherent, and to render the shipment subject to seizure by the government.
In Thomas and Wife v. Winchester, cited by the appellee itself, 6 N. Y. 397, 411, 57 Am. Dec. 455, the court thus defined “prepared”: “The word 'prepared’ on the label, must- be understood, to mean that the article was manufactured by him, or that it had passed through some process under his hands, which would give him personal knowledge of its true name and quality.”
It may well be asked here, What “process” was used by the appellee to cause the figs to become decayed? The answer is found in the appellant’s own statement, that the fruit was shipped in its “natural condition.” Therefore there was no “preparation” on appellee’s part.
Whatever might be the government’s action against the shipper, its suit here is against the shipment; and in such a case the construction is strict as against the shipment: “The rule of strict construction [in favor of the allegedly offending shipper] invoked by the defendant in error has little or no application to statutes designed to promote the public health or public safety.” A. O. Andersen & Co. v. United States (C. C. A. 9) 284 3?. 542, 543.
Finally, the record shows that the law of Austria does “impose similar restrictions as to substances 'used in the preparation and packing’ ” of “products which are not up to the requirements imposed upon interstate shipments,” even if the foreign consignee “has ordered the precise kind and quality which the exporter designs to send to him”: “Other ground coffee admixtures and coffee substitutes. These products must contain no coarse fragments, coming from stems or cores and the like of the products used for this purpose, and must be free from molds, insects, and their maggots.” Official Compilation of the Regulations of the Republic of Austria on Alimentary Foods, published by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Social Administration, Public Health Office, in Vienna.
The majority of the court seeks to answer this objection, at the conclusion of its opinion, by assuming that the “manufacturer, upon receiving the figs, might well free them from all the deleterious matter before converting them into coffee flavoring, or he might divert them to other proper uses if they were unfit for such purpose.”
I do not think that the jurisprudence under the statute authorizes such an assumption. It is true that the eases that I am about to cite deal with interstate and not foreign shipments; hut, since it is admitted that this is a case of first impression, the reasoning in those cases can properly, by analogy, be extended to the ease at bar.
Wo are here concerned with the condition of the shipment as it loaves our shores, and not with what may be done to the merchandise after it has arrived at its foreign destination.
In United States v. Thirteen Crates of Frozen Eggs (C. C. A. 2) 215 F. 584, 585, the court said: “The question of intent of either the shipper or the consignee has nothing to do with the question.”
In the lower court, in that case, the “intent” of both the shipper and the consignee was clearly shown, hut such intent did not prevent the condemnation of the shipment: “Eggs in this condition may be sold and used as an article of food, or for tanning purposes (that is, for use in the tanning of leather), and claimant had sold eggs of this description, selected and segregated at the same time as these, to a tannery or tanning firm located and doing business at a point not far distant from Chicago for tanning purposes. It had not shipped or sold any of its eggs of this description to be used and consumed as an article of food and did not contemplate doing so.” 208 F.(2d) 950, 951. '
As was said by the District Judge in that ease, “the purpose of Congress was to prohibit the transportation of articles in interstate commerce which come within the definition given in the statute and make them subject to seizure and condemnation if so transported.” See, also, United States v. Two Barrels of Desiccated Eggs (D. C.) 185 F. 3021; Union Dairy Co. v. United States (C. C. A. 7) 250 F. 231, 233; United States v. Ninety-four Dozen, More or Less, Half-Gallon Bottles Capon Springs Water (D. C.) 48 F.(2:d) 378, 379, 381.
In Hipolite Egg Co. v. United States, 220 U. S. 45, 52, 55, 31 S. Ct. 364, 55 L. *428Ed. 364, the Supreme Court branded as “untenable” the egg company’s contention that “section 10 of the food and drugs act [21 USCA § 14] does not apply to an article of food which has not been shipped for sale, but which has been shipped solely for use as raw material in the manufacture of some other product.”
“The object of the law,” the court said, “is to keep adulterated articles out of the channels of interstate commerce, or, if they enter such commerce, to condemn them while being transported or when they have reached their destination, provided they remain unloaded, unsold, or in original unbroken packages.”
On page 58 of the opinion in 220 U. S., 31 S. Ct. 364, 367, the Supreme Court (brands articles debased by adulteration as being “outlaws of commerce.”
This apt characterization fits a shipment of wormy figs, and the fact that such shipment is destined for a foreign port does not divest it of its outlaw nature.
Accordingly, I am of the opinion that the decree should be reversed.