Slaughterhouses and meat and poultry processing plants are among the nation’s most polluting industries. They butcher and prepare around 10 billion animals each year. And use large volumes of water to clean carcasses, machinery, work surfaces and floors. The wastewater contains blood and other body residues and is contaminated with the most phosphorus and the second highest levels of nitrogen of all industries, found the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

By the end of August, the EPA has plans to announce new limits on these and other pesky pollutants in wastewater from processing plants that can cause harmful algae blooms, kill swaths of fish and expose local communities to bacteria that cause gastrointestinal illness. 

It would be the first time the EPA has updated its wastewater pollution controls for processing facilities in around 20 years. The move is a big win for environmental groups who sued the EPA for failing to update the pollution rules. In May 2023, the agency and the environmental groups reached a legally binding agreement that obliges the agency to finalize new pollution standards by 31 August. 

“There is an enormous volume of waste going straight into waterways, and contaminating drinking water. It’s desperately overdue for regulation,” says Delcianna Winders, director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School.

The EPA is currently considering comments from industry, advocacy groups and others to help shape the rules. Meat and poultry companies such as Tyson and Cargill, and industry lobby groups are fighting the regulation. In a public submission to the EPA, the Meat and Poultry Coalition, a lobby group that includes the National Pork Producers Council, argues that the new rules will be too expensive to implement and will kill tens of thousands of jobs. 

Industry’s objections may find support in the new Trump administration, which has fired hundreds of EPA employees, and vowed to roll back environmental regulations echoing actions to weaken environmental regulations taken in President Trump’s first term, legal experts warn.

Alexis Andiman, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law nonprofit that co-led the lawsuit against the EPA for failing to update the pollution rules, says Trump’s EPA may renege on its legal obligation to finalize the rules by the end of August. Or it may water down the rules to such an extent that they fail to protect people and the environment, she adds. 

Also, Congress may move forward with legislation that makes it difficult for the EPA to act. For example, Congressmen Ron Estes (R-Kansas) and Eric Burlison (R-Missouri) introduced a bill into the House last month that seeks to stop the EPA from finalizing and implementing the meat and poultry plant pollution limits. 

“It’s clear EPA has an obligation to revise [the rules] and publish pretreatment standards. But it’s hard to say what they will do,” says Andiman.

Huge volumes of nutrient pollution

Today around 5,055 or so meat and poultry facilities are operating in the United States. The new rules would  likely apply to around 17 percent of these, up from around 3 percent that are currently covered. 

Most facilities send wastewater to publicly owned treatment works where it is filtered and cleaned to remove contaminants like oil and grease, and solid floating particles, depending on local rules. But in an analysis, the EPA found that around 171 facilities discharge wastewater directly into wetlands, rivers and streams. These include a plant owned by pork giant Smithfield Foods in Tarheel, North Carolina, and a facility owned by John Morrell and Company in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. 

These types of facilities must obtain permits under the Clean Water Act, a federal law that regulates water pollution. The permits restrict nutrients like nitrogen—which cause algae blooms and are linked to certain cancers, and other contaminants like oil and grease, and solid floating particles. 

Nonetheless, most of the water bodies receiving wastewater from these facilities are not in good shape—they are plagued with algal growth, excess nutrients, and depleted oxygen, the EPA found. 

Part of the problem is that some facilities release very high levels of pollution. In an analysis of the worst offenders, the Environmental Integrity Project found that the John Morrell and Company’s Sioux Falls plant released 866,874 pounds of nitrogen pollution between 2022 and 2023—the most out of all the facilities. The Smithfield plant in Tarheel came in second with 773,553 pounds of nitrogen over the same time frame. These volumes are over six times the average annual nitrogen released by meat and poultry facilities. 

Chris Jones, an expert in water quality and agricultural waste, says these are huge volumes of nutrient pollution. Combining the pollution from the Smithfield and John Morrell facilities is “enough to contaminate about 80 billion gallons of water beyond the safe drinking water standard for nitrate,” says Jones. Putting this into context, New York City uses about one billion gallons of water per year, says Jones, who is author of The Swine Republic, an exposé of the science and politics of agriculture and water pollution in the state of Iowa.

Pollution at these levels can devastate the environment and human health. 

In 2015, a slaughterhouse in Beardstown, Illinois, owned at the time by Cargill Meat Solutions, spilled 29 million gallons of hog waste into ditches and waterways. The pollution ended up in the Muscooten Bay and other local waterways killing 64,000 fish. The slaughterhouse, now owned by JBS, was charged $150,000 in fines for unpermitted discharges, and agreed to pay an additional $34,000 to a local conservation group, writes the EPA.

And in 2021, residents of Millsboro in Delaware settled a lawsuit with Mountaire Farms for over $200 million after a poultry slaughterhouse that it owned contaminated residents’ well water used for drinking with harmful bacteria and unsafe levels of nitrates. The contamination was linked to gastrointestinal illnesses suffered by residents.

New rules to limit pollution

The new rules that the EPA expects to finalize later this year would tighten limits on nitrogen from large processing facilities that directly discharge into water bodies. For example, the new rules would require John Morrell’s Sioux Falls plant to cut its nitrogen by 92 per cent and Smithfield’s Tarheel plant by 88 per cent, the EIP calculated. 

The new rules would also restrict phosphorus in wastewater for the first time. Phosphorus is another nutrient that causes algae blooms.

In addition, the EPA will set some restrictions on the thousands of meat and poultry facilities that discharge wastewater to publicly owned treatment plants. These facilities are currently unchecked by any national restrictions on wastewater contaminants. Although some are required to meet local limits set by the treatment works or local authorities. 

The agency’s new rules would require processing facilities to treat wastewater prior to feeding it to the treatment plants. Facilities must meet water quality standards for biological oxygen demand (BOD) – a measure of the amount of oxygen needed for microbes to decompose organic material. High levels of BOD can deplete oxygen in the water and harm aquatic wildlife. They must also treat suspended solids and oil & grease. But they will not need to curb nitrogen or phosphorus in wastewater. 

The rules could help reduce pressure on wastewater treatment plants, which also clean municipal sewage, says the EPA. Treatment plants are fitted with various technologies to clean water such as screens and dissolved air that bubbles through wastewater. But not all have the technologies or capacity to handle the volume and type of pollutants coming from the meat and poultry facilities. The EPA found that some processing facilities have “directly caused issues” for the treatment works, including damaging their cleaning technologies or causing them to violate discharge permits. 

Problematic facilities include the Kiryas Joel Poultry processing plant and the Kiryas Joel Meat Market Corporation in Orange County, NY, which in 2014 was ordered to pay $330,000 in penalties to settle a lawsuit with the EPA for repeatedly violating the Clean Water Act. 

On numerous occasions between September 2008 and March 2012, the poultry plant discharged large volumes of contaminated wastewater into a local wastewater treatment plant, damaging its filters and other cleaning equipment, legal documents show. The pollution also caused the treatment works to violate its state discharge permit on several occasions when it released contaminated water into a tributary of the Ramapo River. The poultry plant wastewater sometimes contained large volumes of blood causing potentially harmful bacteria to pass through the treatment works and into the waterway. It also spilled wastewater containing chicken parts, fats, oils and grease directly into the tributary, legal documents show.

A step in the right direction

Amanda Vincent, past president of the Association of Clean Water Administrators, a group of clean water program directors whose job it is to implement the Clean Water Act in and across states, writes that the organization supports the EPA’s planned new pollution limits.

“Many states are aware that many downstream publicly owned treatment works have had permit violations for pollutants found in meat and poultry plant wastewater,” she writes in a public submission to the EPA.

Dani Replogle, a staff attorney at Food and Water Watch, one of the advocacy groups that sued the EPA, says the new rules are “a step in the right direction”.  But she is concerned that they only curb nitrogen and phosphorus contamination from facilities that directly pollute rivers and streams. She says the EPA should also apply nutrient limits to the thousands of facilities that discharge into wastewater treatment plants. 

Holly Bainbridge, staff attorney at FarmSTAND, a legal advocacy organization, agrees that the rules don’t go far enough. 

“After decades of inaction, it is not nearly enough to truly counter the massive scale of water pollution from these facilities nationwide,” she says.

After decades of inaction, it is not nearly enough to truly counter the massive scale of water pollution from these facilities nationwide. –
Holly Bainbridge

But the Meat Institute, which represents meat and poultry processing companies, argues that the rules are unnecessary because the industry is already well regulated. The Institute also disputes the EPA’s claim that the industry’s wastewater interferes with treatment plant operations or passes through untreated. “We believe that meat and poultry plant indirect dischargers very rarely, if ever, cause or contribute significantly to interference or pass through at their publicly owned treatment works,” writes Bryan Burns, general counsel to the Meat Institute, in a public submission to the EPA.

The Meat and Poultry Coalition argues that the agency has underestimated the costs to the industry of complying with the rules. It claims that 74 facilities could close, and 80,000 people would lose jobs – over 4 times the impact that the EPA estimated. Complying with the new rules could cost hundreds of millions more than the $232 million per year estimated by the EPA, it writes.

In addition, the new standards would upset “constructive relationships” that meat and poultry facilities have with sewage treatment works, the coalition writes. Many facilities pay fees to treatment plants to clean their wastewater and to help cover operating and maintenance expenses, it writes.  

Will Trump trash the new rules?

Replogle is hopeful that the EPA will finalize the rules by the August deadline as it is legally required to do.

But Winders and Bainbridge question whether Trump’s EPA will honor the legal agreement. 

“The proposed rule is unlikely to fare well under the Trump administration,” says Bainbridge. 

During its first term the Trump administration rolled back several rules under the Clean Water Act and this term it will likely do more of the same, she says.

Whether or not the rule is finalized, it still leaves a problem with federal and state governments that have repeatedly failed to enforce existing rules to control pollution from these facilities, says Bainbridge. 

Bainbridge is part of a team bringing a civil lawsuit against Agri Star, a meat and poultry company that owns a processing facility in Postville, Iowa. The lawsuit says the facility has repeatedly polluted local waterways used for recreation such as fishing and kayaking.

Andiman is bullish. “Whatever happens, we’ll work with our partners to ensure that EPA complies with the law and that people who live near slaughterhouses and animal rendering facilities receive the protection they deserve,” she says.

Editor’s note: U.S. Right to Know is represented by EarthJustice in litigation to pursue a public records request under the Maryland Public Information Act.