EPA touts rules as necessary to control contamination from wastewater, while critics say the rules go too far and exemplify federal overreach.
By Darlene McCormick Sanchez | Epoch Times
Food prices—especially meat and poultry—have skyrocketed in the past four years and could be exacerbated further next year when new EPA rules for meat processors go into effect.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Price Outlook for September reported that beef and veal prices had increased for six straight months, and predicted they will rise 5.2 percent overall in 2024. Poultry prices also rose, although by a smaller percentage, and are expected to rise more before year’s end.
The report traced the rise to factors including pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and the worst inflation since the 1980s.
Next year could see still higher meat and poultry prices at the grocery store, analysts say. That’s because an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal is expected to put some meat processors out of business, resulting in potential job losses and supply chain disruptions.
The EPA announced a proposed rule change governing effluent, or wastewater, limits for meat and poultry processors in January of this year, followed by public comment in the spring.
The agency’s final rule will go into effect in August 2025.
The proposal has met with opposition from dozens of states, industry stakeholders, and policy experts, who fear it will harm the industry, the food supply, and consumers.
The proposed changes are spurred by lawsuits filed by a coalition of 13 environmental organizations. In 2019, the groups challenged the Trump administration under the Clean Water Act for not updating aging water pollution control standards for slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.
In response, the EPA pledged to strengthen its regulations, without implementing changes. In December 2022, a second lawsuit was filed, resulting in the current proposal.
The proposed rule contains three possible options for reducing wastewater discharges from slaughterhouses and poultry processors through water filtration technology.
Benefits and Drawbacks
The EPA estimates that the new rules would reduce pollutants discharged through wastewater from processing facilities by about 100 million pounds per year.
The proposed rules would establish tighter limitations for nitrogen released into the environment by large processors and, for the first time, would limit phosphorus.
The rules would apply to processors directly discharging wastewater into bodies of water, and, for the first time, would also apply to those indirectly discharging wastewater via water treatment plants.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Washington on Jan. 4, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times
In another first, the new rules would establish pretreatment standards for oil and grease, total suspended solids, and biochemical oxygen demand.
The EPA solicited comments on its preferred option and on two other proposals, which would apply pollutant limitations to smaller processors and tighten restrictions on wastewater pollutants.
About 850 of some 5,000 facilities would be impacted by the preferred rule changes, the agency said. Those include large facilities processing more than 50 million pounds of meat per year and more than 100 million pounds of poultry per year.
The EPA estimates that under its preferred option, at least 16 facilities will be forced to close, impacting at least 17,000 jobs. At the top end, the EPA estimates up to 53 plants could close.
Prices for beef, chicken, turkey, and pork products are expected to increase slightly while availability of meat and poultry is expected to decrease slightly, according to the agency.
In an email to The Epoch Times, EPA scientist Michael Nye called the proposed regulations “economically achievable” and flexible enough to allow processors to find “even lower-cost compliance options.”
The agency’s literature said cutting down on wastewater pollution from processors would reduce exposure to pathogens and toxins, improve aquatic habitats, and enhance recreational and tourism use of lakes and rivers.
Less pollution would combat climate issues and work to address pollution in poor and minority communities, according to the EPA.
The agency estimated the “total monetized benefits” of tightening the wastewater standards to be between about $90 million and $180 million annually.
States Push Back
A coalition of attorneys general from 27 states—led by Kansas and Arkansas—have argued that the rule change amounts to federal overreach.
Part of the rule change would regulate processors that release wastewater into treatment plants, which is unnecessary, they stated in a March letter to the EPA.
The states say that the EPA currently regulates only 171 of the meat and poultry product facilities in the United States. Those are facilities that directly discharge wastewater into bodies of water—not facilities that release it indirectly by discharging it to sewers or municipal sewage treatment plants.
Workers process chickens at a poultry plant in Fremont, Neb., on Dec. 12, 2019. Nati Harnik/AP Photo
By also including facilities that indirectly discharge wastewater, the regulation would expand to encompass some 3,879 facilities, according to the states. The EPA “has never before claimed such sweeping authority to regulate indirect discharges,” they stated, calling the proposed rule “not only costly but also unlawful.”
Federal statistics show that inflation remains high, they said, and shutting down meat and poultry processors would only aggravate the problem.
The attorneys general also questioned the data on which the EPA’s proposal is based.
“It appears that EPA is relying primarily on data put together by the groups that were suing them to come up with this rule,” they said.
The EPA cited plaintiff findings such as those from a 2018 Environmental Integrity Project report to support the proposed changes.
“Tyson Fresh Meats of Dakota City, Nevada, releases as much as 3,084 pounds of nitrogen per day into the Missouri River, a level approximately equal to the waste load of 132,000 people,” the agency said in technical documents citing the 2018 report.
Tyson Foods could not be reached for comment.
EPA Says Changes Will Be Minor
Nye said that under the proposed changes, the EPA anticipates between 16 and 53 facilities could close—between 0.4 and 1.4 percent of the meat and poultry processors that discharge wastewater.
Not all facilities discharge wastewater, so not all would be impacted, he said.
The EPA said it expects the impact on prices and the supply of meat and poultry to be minor, ranging from .01 to .06 percent.
However, the rule “has the potential to impact the net costs incurred by [meat and poultry processing] facilities, wholesale and retail prices for meat products, and the prices paid to farmers,” according to the agency.
Some applauded the EPA’s push for stricter standards. Others, such as Milwaukee Riverkeeper, which bills itself as a “science-based advocacy organization working for swimmable, fishable rivers throughout the Milwaukee River Basin,” said the EPA didn’t go far enough.
During public comment, the group told the EPA its preferred option would allow “78 percent of dischargers to continue to pollute our waterways, threatening our downstream drinking water supplies, and passing the cost on to taxpayers that fund our wastewater treatment plants.”
The East Bay Municipal Utility District Wastewater Treatment Plant in Oakland, Calif., on March 20, 2024. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Economic Impact
Industry insiders said they worry the impact of the requirements will be more significant than the EPA calculated, causing more closures and job losses than expected, while pushing prices higher for consumers.
Stakeholders said the proposal underestimated the cost to processors, the number of facility closures, job losses, and the impact on food security.
They also said the comment period was too short for such complex rule changes. The comment period on the proposed changes was shortened to meet deadlines imposed in the environmental lawsuit.
An economic analysis performed by U.S. Poultry and Egg Association on the EPA’s preferred option states that the industry will incur $1.16 billion per year in compliance costs.
Should the EPA choose to revise the rules in accordance with the other two options instead, compliance costs would be “dramatically higher,” Gwen Venable, an executive vice president with the association, told The Epoch Times in an email.
U.S. Poultry’s analysis found that 74 facilities would close under the EPA’s preferred option, a higher number than the EPA’s estimate.
“This would trigger the loss of 31,500 to 78,500 direct jobs associated with the production facility’s closure,” Venable said.
Looking at the trickle-down impact on companies that provided goods and services to the shuttered facilities, potential job losses could be even greater—between 127,000 to 317,000, according to the analysis.
Ryan Schmidt, president of Schmidt’s Meat Market in Nicollet, Minnesota—population 1,100—said the EPA’s changes could force him out of business if the agency decides to enforce them on smaller processors.
“We may be forced to close our family-owned business that has been serving the Southern Minnesota area for 77 years,” Schmidt wrote in a letter to the agency.
Schmidt said the expense would be “astronomical” for his plant. Located in the middle of town, the facility is landlocked and would not be able to expand to accommodate new equipment or land requirements for wastewater treatment.
Closing his plant would mean the loss of more than 50 jobs in Nicollet and would force area farmers to travel farther to process their livestock.
Employees assist a customer at Canales Quality Meats in Washington on Feb. 8, 2022. The EPA said it expects minor impact on prices and the supply of meat and poultry, but industry insiders said they worry the impact will be more significant than the EPA calculated. Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
“There will be fewer processors, meat and poultry will be more difficult to find, and prices may skyrocket,” Schmidt said.
Koch Foods of Park Ridge, Illinois, which employs more than 13,000 people, responded that the proposed changes would cause “significant facility closures” and adversely impact small businesses.
The food processor estimated the number of closures would be closer to 48 and questioned the data used in the government’s analysis.
According to a statement submitted by Jessica Culbert, Koch Foods’ regional environmental manager, the proposed regulations would impact closer to 50,000 jobs instead of the EPA’s projected 17,000.
In a February letter to the EPA, Marty Durbin, president of the Global Energy Institute at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the cost of compliance is likely to be “more than a million dollars per facility” for many of the businesses affected.
When asked to respond to critics who say the changes are part of an agenda to reduce meat consumption, Nye cited reasons for the change such as outdated regulations and the location of meat processing facilities near communities with “environmental justice concerns.”
In its rationale for rejecting two of the proposed options, the EPA cited concerns that they could “impede the Biden administration’s initiatives to expand independent meat and poultry processing capacity and enhance the resilience of the food supply chain.”
The administration wants to protect against the type of supply chain disruption that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic, it said.