BREAKING: Environmental Groups Sue EPA Over Slaughterhouse Pollution Withdrawals

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is facing legal action after it axed proposed improvements aimed at cleaning up slaughterhouse wastewater. Earlier this month the EPA abandoned Biden-era proposals for a new rule meant to reduce slaughterhouse waste pollution from blood, bone, muscle, manure and other sources. On September 15, the environmental groups filed a Petition for Review with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit., asking the court to review the decision to withdraw the proposed rule by the EPA and its administrator, Lee Zeldin.

A coalition of 10 organizations filed the legal action for withdrawing the proposed rule, including Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity Project, both U.S. environmental advocacy groups.

“We’re filing because we believe that EPA’s decision to withdraw its proposal to modernize water pollution standards for slaughterhouses is illegal. We don’t think the rule should have been withdrawn,” says Alexis Andiman, senior attorney at Earthjustice.

In a December 2024 analysis, the EPA acknowledges that 60 million Americans could benefit from the proposed new rule, and, Andiman says the agency has “repeatedly indicated that it is possible for slaughterhouses and rendering facilities to reduce the amount of pollution they put into rivers and streams.” Given the agency’s own findings, Andiman argues that the “EPA cannot just decide not to strengthen standards.”

The 2024 analysis further predicts that the preferred option, one of three possible regulatory approaches put forward by the Biden EPA, would result in “environmental and ecological improvements … along with reduced impacts to wildlife and human health.” 

Andiman additionally argues that the EPA’s rationale for the withdrawal, that it would raise grocery prices, “is inconsistent with its own analysis.” A chart in another EPA analysis shows compliance with the proposed new rule would mean possible meat price increases of, at most, 0.05 percent.

Andiman says the environmental groups want to see the EPA “require slaughterhouses to adopt modern treatment technology and reduce the amount of pollution they’re putting into rivers and streams, which is something we know they’re capable of doing.”  

In an email to Sentient, the EPA press office wrote “in keeping with a longstanding practice, EPA does not comment on any current or pending litigation.” The agency previously told Sentient that the rule withdrawal “is saving billions of dollars in costs the American people would otherwise see increases in the prices of the meat and poultry they buy at the grocery store while ensuring the protection of human health and the environment,” a statement that was included in an EPA press release.

In the axed proposal, Biden EPA officials wrote that the slaughterhouse industry “discharges large quantities of nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, that enter the Nation’s waters. Nutrient pollution is one of the most widespread, costly, and challenging environmental problems impacting water quality in the United States.” Both nitrogen and phosphorus are found in animal blood, bone, muscle and manure.

Officially titled the Clean Water Act Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for the Meat and Poultry Products Point Source Category, the proposed Biden-era rule aimed to close gaps in current slaughterhouse waste regulations which were last updated in 2004.

Those gaps include the regulation’s failure to limit the discharge of fecal coliform bacteria — a group that includes E. coli — from thousands of slaughterhouses classified as indirect dischargers, meaning their waste water is taken to treatment plants. The current rule also does not cover phosphorus which is found in animal blood. Too much phosphorus in the water leads to excessive algal growth and oxygen depletion. Low-oxygen waters can destroy aquatic life and increase production of methane and nitrous oxide.

A press release from the environmental groups suing the EPA says the the Biden proposal “would have, for the first time, imposed limits on phosphorus pollution from 126 meat industry plants across the U.S., eliminating at least eight million pounds of this pollutant per year, plus nine million pounds of nitrogen and other pollutants, including fecal bacteria and grease.”

Andiman says the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw a rule aimed at limiting pollution is consistent with other actions it has taken. “I think it is meaningful that it was the Biden administration that put out the proposed rule [and] I think we have seen many indications that the Trump administration will be hostile — has been hostile — to concerns about protecting the environment, protecting public health.”

Trump’s first administration pulled America out of the Paris Climate Agreement, and he has plans to do the same again in the current term, while Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was recently questioned by lawmakers about limiting access to vaccines and appears to have ditched proposals to encourage Americans to replace red meat with plants including beans, peas and lentils.

If the legal action against the EPA proceeds along expected lines, both sides will make their arguments in court in the next few months. As part of the court procedure, Andiman says the EPA will have to explain the decision making process that led to removing the proposed rule. “EPA will need to share with us its rulemaking records, all the things that it considered when it decided to withdraw this rule. And then we will make arguments to the court about whether the withdrawal is illegal.”