## Facts

- Congress required mandatory country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for certain agricultural commodities in the 2002 and 2008 Farm Bills.
- USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service implemented COOL through prior rules that permitted “commingling,” allowing a single label for meat from animals of different origins processed on the same day.
- In 2013, USDA issued a revised COOL rule requiring retailers of certain muscle cuts of meat to disclose both (1) countries of origin and (2) where production steps occurred, stated as “born, raised, and slaughtered.”
- The 2013 rule eliminated commingling to make labels identify where each production step occurred.
- Meat and livestock trade associations challenged the 2013 rule, arguing it compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment and imposed significant compliance burdens.
- USDA defended the rule as a factual disclosure regime serving consumer information interests, including origin-based purchasing preferences and food-safety-related traceability concerns.

## Issues

1. Whether Zauderer’s standard for compelled commercial disclosures applies only to deception-prevention interests or also to other legitimate governmental interests.
2. Whether the 2013 COOL disclosure requirements violate the First Amendment under the applicable compelled-speech standard.
3. Whether the required disclosures are “factual and uncontroversial” and not “unjustified or unduly burdensome” within the meaning of Zauderer.

## Decision

- The en banc D.C. Circuit affirmed the denial of a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the 2013 COOL rule.
- The court held that Zauderer governs compelled disclosure of “factual and uncontroversial” information and is not limited to deception-prevention rationales.
- Applying Zauderer, the court concluded the COOL disclosures were constitutional because they were factual, reasonably related to legitimate governmental interests, and not shown to be unduly burdensome.

## Legal Principles

- Compelled disclosure requirements in commercial speech are evaluated under Zauderer when they require “purely factual and uncontroversial information.”
- Zauderer is not confined to compelled disclosures aimed solely at preventing consumer deception; it may apply when the government asserts other legitimate informational interests.
- Under Zauderer, a compelled disclosure must be reasonably related to a legitimate governmental interest and not unjustified or unduly burdensome so as to chill protected speech.
- A mandate to disclose where animals were “born, raised, and slaughtered” is treated as factual, non-ideological information even if the policy is contested.
- Cost and operational burdens from compliance do not invalidate a compelled disclosure absent a showing that the mandate is unjustified or so burdensome that it effectively suppresses protected expression.

## Conclusion

The en banc D.C. Circuit upheld USDA’s 2013 COOL rule at the preliminary-injunction stage, ruling that compelled disclosure of factual origin and production-step information is permissible under Zauderer when reasonably tied to legitimate governmental interests and not unduly burdensome.


Am. Meat Inst. v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 760 F.3d 18 (D.C. Cir. 2014) (en banc)