Slaughterhouse Blues

The placement and organization of slaughterhouses in the U.S. are critical issues, especially for states like Florida that depend significantly on cattle farming. Waste from slaughtered animals flows into our lakes and canals, causing water contamination that may affect human health. The untreated wastewater from these facilities comprises a complex mix of proteins, fibers, and fats, resulting in elevated organic matter levels that pollute rivers and drainage systems. This wastewater presents a serious environmental risk. Inadequate management of this biohazardous waste can lead to numerous health and ecological problems. Therefore, it is vital to implement effective wastewater treatment methods at slaughterhouses to prevent the pollution of both surface and groundwater.

The EPA is considering exempting slaughterhouses from regulations that require pollution reduction in water discharges. Environmental organizations are urging the EPA to enforce existing technology standards to control pollutants from meat processing facilities that release waste into waterways. While these regulations would greatly reduce pollution from facilities that discharge waste directly into waterways, they largely overlook the more common threat of sending effluents to municipal sewage treatment systems, which are often ill-equipped to handle industrial waste.

Clean water advocacy groups are urging the agency to strengthen its actions against slaughterhouses, which are major contributors to phosphorus and nitrogen pollution—often called “nutrients”—that lead to harmful algal blooms and fish-killing dead zones in U.S. waters. In both 2019 and 2022, a coalition of 13 environmental organizations filed lawsuits against the EPA, calling for compliance with the Clean Water Act and the necessity for updated technology standards for water pollution systems in slaughterhouses and meat processing facilities, which have remained stagnant for over twenty years.

The EPA’s preferred strategy is to strengthen nitrogen pollution limits and, for the first time, implement phosphorus discharge limits for facilities that release wastewater directly into water bodies. These new regulations could reduce nitrogen and phosphorus from these direct dischargers. The EPA’s main focus would only regulate oil and grease, total suspended solids, and biochemical oxygen demand from these indirect dischargers, who have evaded regulation for years.

Many municipal wastewater treatment facilities struggle to process the waste from slaughterhouses and rendering plants. Fortunately, the EPA’s proposal includes a more protective alternative that would require over 40 percent of these indirect dischargers to treat the nutrients in the waste they send to public sewer systems. This option could eliminate an additional 67 million tons of nitrogen and 20 million tons of phosphorus each year. The EPA has publicly noted that nutrient contamination significantly contributes to preventing numerous rivers, streams, lakes, and estuaries from meeting the Clean Water Act’s longstanding “fishable and swimmable” standards.

The coalition is urging the EPA to take stronger action, at a minimum, to adopt the most environmentally protective alternative to prevent slaughterhouse waste from overwhelming public sewage systems. Under the federal Clean Water Act, the EPA is required to establish water pollution standards for all industries and review them annually to determine if updates are needed to reflect advancements in pollution-control technology. However, despite this mandate, the EPA has not revised standards for slaughterhouses and meat processing plants in at least 19 years. Some facilities still operate under standards that date back to the mid-1970s. Moreover, the EPA has never set national standards that apply to most slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, which indirectly discharge polluted wastewater through publicly owned treatment systems.