Despite raising plausible consumer harm claims, an animal rights lawsuit against USDA over alleged chicken meat mislabeling was properly dismissed, according to a federal appeals court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the Animal Legal Defense Fund lacked standing in the case because it didn’t sufficiently demonstrate continued future injury from USDA’s practices.

In 2021, ALDF filed a complaint alleging the agency’s Food Safety and Inspection Service allowed the Perdue chicken company to deceptively label its meat with cartoon depictions of poultry eating vegetation outdoors.

The plaintiff argued the illustrations misrepresented the chickens’ living conditions to consumers, as Perdue actually keeps them confined indoors, but a federal judge threw out the case two years ago.

The D.C. Circuit has now affirmed that ALDF lacked standing to pursue the complaint in federal court, though the ruling didn’t reject the group’s arguments in every respect.

A consumer represented by ALDF plausibly alleged a “sufficiently concrete and particularized” injury in claiming to be misled by imagery of chickens roaming beneath the sun, the appellate court said.

However, because the nonprofit is seeking an injunction against such illustrations, rather than financial compensation, it must demonstrate “the harm is ongoing or substantially likely to recur,” the ruling said.

The complaint “fails to thread that needle” because the consumer wouldn’t plausibly continue buying Perdue’s chicken after finding out the birds are actually raised indoors, regardless of the label imagery, the ruling said.

For similar reasons, the appellate court rejected the claim that consumer confidence is undermined by USDA’s policy of reviewing only the written claims about meat products and not label illustrations.

Though this argument again alleges a “concrete injury,” the complaint doesn’t contain allegations regarding illustrations on other products, the ruling said. “We then must accept the possibility that there are no such products.”