EPA effort to withdraw pollution controls for slaughterhouses is illegal, lawsuit claims
A recent move by federal regulators to walk back a proposed rule that would have tightened water pollution standards for US meat industry plants violates the Clean Water Act, which requires slaughterhouses to curb pollution using modern technology, according to a lawsuit filed this week.
Ten organizations filed the legal action against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Monday. The groups allege that the Trump administration’s decision to abandon regulations that would have stopped millions of pounds of pollutants from being dumped by slaughterhouses and meat processing plants into waterways across the US jeopardizes public health.
“The US meat industry slaughters some 18,000 animals a minute, creating a waste stream full of blood, fecal bacteria and disease-causing pathogens that adds up to one of our country’s largest industrial sources of nutrient pollution,” Hannah Connor, environmental health deputy director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement about the legal action. “Now Trump’s EPA is killing a rule designed to curb discharges of that nasty wastewater into our rivers and streams and safeguard people and wildlife.”
The action was filed by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity, Waterkeeper Alliance, Environment America, Food & Water Watch and others.
Modern technologies can remove significant amounts of pollution discharged by facilities in a cost-effective manner and already widely used across the country, including by municipal wastewater treatment plants, according to Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project.
However, some of the EPA’s pollution standards for slaughterhouses haven’t been updated since the 1970s, allowing facilities that release harmful nutrient pollution, pathogens, grease and blood into waterways to use long-outdated technologies to limit pollution.
“We know technology has dramatically improved since the 1970s, and the Clean Water Act demands that they are updated,” said Duggan. “If EPA abandons this rule as they’re proposing to do here, then communities that live near these facilities are going to continue to suffer.”
Compared to other industry categories, the meat and poultry products industry discharges the highest levels of phosphorus and the second highest levels of nitrogen, harmful nutrients that present health hazards for humans and lead to toxic algal blooms that kill aquatic life, according to the EPA.
In its 2024 proposed rulemaking, the agency called nutrient pollution “one of the most widespread, costly and challenging environmental problems impacting water quality in the United States.”
Slaughterhouses in 2019 released over 28 million pounds of nitrogen and phosphorus directly into US rivers and streams, with a 2023 EPA assessment finding that over 60 million people across the country live within one mile of a waterway that may be impacted by wastewater from meat or poultry facilities.
The regulations proposed under the Biden administration were expected to reduce pollutant discharges by almost 100 million pounds per year, including nine million pounds of nitrogen discharges and eight million pounds of phosphorus.
In its move to withdraw the proposed rule, published September 3 in the Federal Register and celebrated by meat and poultry producers, the EPA argued that imposing additional regulations on the meat and poultry products industry would add to the industry’s economic stressors.
However, the agency had earlier concluded that any supply chain disruptions resulting from its preferred option for tighter slaughterhouse pollution controls would be “minimal temporary and localized,” with an estimated 16 facilities potentially facing closures.
“Their decision here is inconsistent with the science and the technical analysis and the facts that are in the rulemaking record that EPA used to support a proposed rule,” said Duggan.
The EPA declined to comment on the pending litigation.
(Featured image by Getty Images for Unsplash+.)
