EPA walks back proposal to limit water pollution from meat and poultry plants

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In a move celebrated by US meat and poultry producers but mourned by environment and health advocates, federal regulators are walking back a proposed rule that would have strengthened water pollution standards for slaughterhouse operators.

The move to withdraw the proposed rule was published September 3 in the Federal Register.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded that “it is not appropriate to impose additional regulation on the [Meat and Poultry Products] industry, given Administration priorities and policy concerns, including protecting food supply and mitigating inflationary prices for American consumers.”  Additional regulations on the industry’s wastewater would also result in increased air pollution and solid waste, the EPA wrote.

Slaughterhouses and rendering facilities have long come under fire from health and environmental advocates for polluting US rivers and streams with nitrogen and phosphorus, nutrients which can contaminate drinking water and cause harmful algal blooms that are harmful to humans and animals.

In 2019, slaughterhouses released over 28 million pounds of the nutrients directly into waterways.

In a 2023 environmental assessment, the EPA determined that over 60 million people in the US live within one mile of a stream or river potentially impacted by wastewater discharge from the meat or poultry facilities.

“We appreciate the EPA’s acknowledgement of our industry’s dedication to properly treat wastewater coming from our plants to a very high standard,” Nath Morris, president of the US Poultry & Egg Association, said in a statement.

The EPA’s decision “ends a regulatory disaster that would have forced meat processing facilities to close, causing food prices to go up and hardship for livestock and poultry producers,” Julie Anna Potts, President and CEO of the  Meat Institute, added in a statement.

The US EPA in 1974 implemented a regulation for pollutants in wastewater directly discharged by facilities that make meat and poultry products, which the agency amended in 2004. The regulation still only applies to about 150 of the industry’s more than 5,000 facilities and fails to cover phosphorus and pollutants in wastewater that plants indirectly discharge.

Environmental advocacy groups filed a lawsuit in 2019, challenging the EPA’s lack of action to update water pollution standards for slaughterhouses and rendering facilities. The agency announced in 2021 that it would update standards, but failed to commit to a timeline by which it would issue a new rulemaking, leading the groups to sue again.

In what Earthjustice called “a victory for clean water,” the EPA in 2023 announced it would publish updated water pollution standards for slaughterhouses and rendering facilities by August 2025.

The EPA’s proposed rulemaking in 2024 under the Biden administration could have resulted in 16 facilities closing, with any supply chain disruptions being “minimal, temporary and localized,” according to the agency’s evaluation at the time.

The proposed regulations would have reduced pollutant discharges by almost 100 million pounds per year, including nine million pounds of nitrogen discharges and eight million pounds of phosphorus.

The agency’s preferred option would have cost about $232 million annually and would “allow the Agency to achieve significant reductions in nutrients and conventional pollutants in a way that avoids potential supply chain disruptions in the nation’s food supply,” according to the EPA’s proposal.

The decision to step back from new rules is a blow to years of efforts to limit pollution of important waterways, critics said.

“This decision by the Trump Administration will mean that slaughterhouses will continue to dump huge amounts of pollution into America’s waterways, making them unhealthy for swimming, fishing, and drinking,” Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement. “This gross neglect degrades the quality of life of Americans across the country.”

(Featured image by mahmut …… on Unsplash.)