In January 2024, the EPA proposed new effluent limitations guidelines (ELGs) that would bring meat and poultry processing (MPP) facilities under EPA authority by requiring MPP facilities to add expensive water filtration systems to comply with the proposed regulation.
According to an EPA Fact Sheet on the proposed rule, pollutants discharged from MPP facilities include oil and grease, organic material, salts, ammonia, and significant quantities of the nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus.
“The MPP category is one of the largest sources of industrial nutrient pollution in the country,” the Fact Sheet states. “Nutrient pollution is a significant environmental challenge affecting ecosystems and communities across the country. Excessive nitrogen and phosphorus in surface water can lead to a variety of problems, including eutrophication and harmful algal blooms, which have negative impacts on human health and the environment. EPA estimates that the proposed regulation would reduce pollutants discharged through wastewater from MPP facilities by approximately 100 million pounds per year.”
Soon after the rule was proposed, several sources reported the proposed rule was legally vulnerable due to the expensive costs involved in adding the filtration systems and because MPPs were excluded from a settlement in a case that forced the EPA to revise the ELGs to include MPPs.
Meanwhile, in July, Glenn Thompson, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, noted that the EPA’s proposed ELGs “could counter what the US Department of Agriculture is doing with its Meat and Poultry Processing Expansion (MPPEP) program,” according to meat and poultry news site Meat+Poultry.
“While Biden’s [U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)] spends millions to — supposedly — expand meat and poultry processing capacity, his EPA is simultaneously proposing a rule that would shutter processing plants and impose significant compliance costs across industries vital to food affordability,” Thompson added.
“I think we at USDA worked collaboratively with the EPA to ensure that it had very, very little impact on processing capacity,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, according to Meat+Poultry. “There may have been a handful of processing facilities that may have been impacted by this rule in terms of potentially being shut down, as the chairman said. But the vast, vast majority of processing facilities, we’re not necessarily going to be in a situation where they were going to have to shutter the doors. I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration by the chairman.”
According to the EPA Fact Sheet, there are three options for the proposed regulation:
- The EPA’s preferred regulatory option would strengthen the effluent limitations established in the 1974 and 2004 rules by establishing more stringent effluent limitations for the control of nitrogen and, for the first time, effluent limitations on the discharge of phosphorus. This option would apply to 850 of the 5,000 MPP facilities nationwide.
- “The proposed regulation contains two additional options on which EPA is requesting public comment. These options would apply effluent limitations to additional direct discharging facilities and pretreatment standards to additional indirect discharging facilities. The two additional options would also establish pretreatment standards for nitrogen and phosphorus for some of the indirect discharging facilities included in the preferred option,” the EPA Fact Sheet says.
“Under the facility closure analysis, the EPA estimated that 16 facilities would potentially close under its first preferred option,” Meat+Poultry notes. “Under Option 2, EPA estimated 22 facilities would potentially close, and under Option 3, 53 facilities would potentially close.”
“When you take 53 plants out of the 134 you just gave millions of dollars to expand capacity, now we’ve gone backwards and we’re losing capacity again,” Chris Young, executive director of the American Association of Meat Processors (AAMP), said during an interview with Meat+Poultry.
Young is also concerned about the USDA’s role.
“I’m trying to understand where Secretary Vilsack’s coming from, but the fact is that until we see the final rule, he can’t predict how many plants will shut down,” he said. “I can’t predict how many plants will shut down.
“What has been looked at overall, not just by us but by members of Congress, is this seems to be part of a pattern under this administration of ‘sue and settle’ with the EPA, and that’s how this regulation came about was through EPA being sued by several different activist groups.”