Industrial meat and poultry processing plants dump
huge volumes of pollution into America’s rivers.

Slaughterhouses Are Polluting
Our Waterways

Updated Rules Are Needed to Protect Our Health and Wildlife

Pollution from slaughterhouses contributes toalgal outbreaks.

Industrial meat and poultry processing plants dump huge volumes of pollution
into America’s rivers, threatening our health and harming our environment. The
construction of more slaughterhouses adds to this water pollution. Despite Clean Water Act
requirements, the EPA has refused to update decades-old pollution standards to protect the public.

Slaughterhouses pollute our rivers
Slaughterhouses—industrial facilities thatprocess and package poultry, beef, pork andother meat—discharge millions of poundsof pollution into America’s waterways everyyear.1• Wastewater from slaughterhouses contains
nitrogen and phosphorus that contributeto toxic algal outbreaks and dead zones.
• Wastewater also can contain fecal bacteria
and pathogens, veterinary drugs, cleaningproducts and blood.
• According to the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), as of 2015, 367 slaughterhouses—including many that process thousands of animals a day—dumped wastewater directly into rivers and streams.
• Many other slaughterhouses send waste to
public wastewater treatment plants, potentially increasing pollution from those facilities. In addition, in 2002, the EPA counted
more than 1,000 facilities that stored waste
in on-site lagoons or spread it on land.
Heavy rains can cause lagoons to overflow
or wash waste off fields where it has beensprayed, polluting nearby waterways.
1View all sources online at https://bit.ly/2WVV7wB

Slaughterhouses are major water polluters
Meat and poultry processing facilities are aleading source of water pollution.
• In 2018, slaughterhouses released morethan 55 million pounds of toxic substances
directly into the nation’s rivers and streams.
• Meat and poultry processing facilities are
the largest industrial point source of nitrogen pollution discharged to waterways,
according to 2015 EPA data. (See Figure1.) They also generate 14 percent of thephosphorus released into waterways fromindustrial sources.

All othercategories
32%

Meat andpoultry
products
27%

Iron and steel
manufacturing
Chemicals and14%
plastics
Petroleum
14%
refining
13%Slaughterhouses are the leading industrial point sourceof nitrogen discharged into waterways.

Slaughterhouse pollution can containdangerous viruses and bacteria
Wastewater from meat and poultry processing
facilities contains bacteria, viruses and parasites that can make water unsafe for drinking,recreation or irrigation.
• Pathogens commonly found in slaughterhouse wastewater have been linked to gastrointestinal diseases, bloody diarrhea, liver
damage, and in some cases death.
• Slaughterhouse wastewater can containantibiotic-resistant strains of E. coli, fuelingthe spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteriathat cause hard-to-treat infections.
• Municipal drinking water systems downstream from slaughterhouses use disinfectants to kill pathogens, potentially creating
unsafe chemical byproducts. For example,
JBS Pork discharges its wastewater into theDes Moines River, which is a drinking water
source for Ottumwa, Iowa. Ottumwa Water Works has reported levels of drinking
water disinfection byproducts that at times
exceeded drinking water standards andranked in the top 10 percent nationally.

Other pollutants in slaughterhousewaste also threaten human health
Nitrates degrade drinking water.
• Nitrates, a form of nitrogen, account fornearly all the pollution reported in slaughterhouse wastewater discharged to rivers.
• In Sussex County, Delaware, field spraying
of slaughterhouse wastewater has polluted
local drinking water wells with nitrates.
• Nitrates have been linked to “blue baby syndrome” and colorectal and other cancers.
Nitrogen and phosphorus pollution fromslaughterhouses threatens human health bycontributing to toxic algal outbreaks.
• Toxic algae makes water unsafe to drink.
Algal outbreaks can produce high levels of
cyanotoxins that water treatment systems
may not be able to completely filter out of
drinking water.
• Algal outbreaks can also make water unsafe
for swimming. In 2019, officials orderedmultiple lengthy beach closures in Missis-Pollution from slaughterhouses can contribute to algal
outbreaks.

sippi due to algal outbreaks. They warned
beachgoers not to come into contact withthe water because the algae could cause
nausea and vomiting and harm the liverand nervous system.

Slaughterhouse wastewater harms
wildlife and ecosystems
Nitrogen and phosphorus pollution fromslaughterhouses contributes to dead zones,
harming ecosystems and wildlife.
• Nutrient pollution feeds algal outbreaks.
When large numbers of algae die, they
remove oxygen from the water and create“dead zones” for fish and other aquatic life.
• Many slaughterhouses discharge into thevast Mississippi River watershed, whichflows into the Gulf of Mexico.
• In 2019, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico covered 6,592 square miles, forcing fishto either flee or suffocate. Reduced habitat
can cause fish populations to decline.
Slaughterhouse wastewater damages wildlife
and ecosystems in additional ways.
• Compounds found in slaughterhousewastewater, such as chromium and chemicals from detergents used in cleaning, havebeen found to cause changes in aquaticecosystems that endanger fish and vegetation.
• In 2015, after a wastewater lagoon spilled
millions of gallons at a JBS USA slaughterhouse in Beardstown, Illinois, untreatedwastewater was pumped into a nearby bay
connected to the Illinois River, leading to
the death of more than 64,000 fish.

Slaughterhouses increase the pollution
threat from CAFOs
New meat and poultry processing facilities
create demand for huge volumes of livestock
and poultry, and can spur construction of
more concentrated animal feeding operations(CAFOs).
• In Humboldt, Tennessee, Tyson Foods isbuilding a new facility to process 1.25 million chickens per week. To supply the plantwith chickens, Tyson estimates it will contract with 80 farmers, at least one of whom
will build new chicken houses. Most of thechickens will be raised within 35 miles ofthe plant.
• A new Costco chicken processing facility inNebraska has resulted in construction ofhundreds of new barns at chicken farms.
Some farms will raise as many as 750,000
chickens at a time. (See sidebar.)
CAFOs are themselves a major source of waterpollution.
• Livestock and poultry operations produce
huge amounts of manure. A large feeding
operation with 60,000 hogs, for example,
can produce nearly 100,000 tons of manure
in a year.
• CAFOs often are concentrated in a limited
geographic area, and produce more nitrogen and phosphorus than can be absorbed
by crops on the surrounding farmland. Asa result, nutrient pollution from manure isa major source of pollution in the nation’swaterways.
• For example, in North Carolina, immense
hog operations generate waste that has
polluted the state’s rivers and streams.
Heavy rain has washed the waste off fields
where it has been sprayed. Lagoons also
have overflowed during hurricanes, spreading bacteria into water that people comeinto contact with.

Slaughterhouses present a growing
threat to water quality•

The number of slaughterhouses that discharge wastewater directly to streams andrivers increased by more than 25 percent••

from 2004 to 2015, according to the EPA.
Major new slaughterhouses have been built
in recent years or are under constructionin Tennessee, Nebraska, Rhode Island andMichigan.
As existing slaughterhouses increase theirproduction speeds to process more animals, they may also produce more wastewater.

An abundant supply of corn for chicken feed, suchas at this existing facility, drew Costco to build achicken processing facility in Fremont, Nebraska.

Case study: New poultry processing
facility will lead to massive amountsof manure
In 2017, Costco began construction on anew chicken processing facility in Fremont,Nebraska, that will process more than 2
million chickens per week. The slaughterhouse is on the Platte River upstream fromthe drinking water supply for Omaha andLincoln. In addition, to ensure an adequate
supply of chickens for the facility, Lincoln
Premium Poultry, the company managing
the project, planned to contract with farmers to build 520 new chicken barns. This
expanded chicken population will generatelarge amounts of manure.
Industrial chicken operations contain multiple barns. Some of these facilities will holdup to 750,000 birds.
Once all the chicken houses are operating,they could produce a total of 3.9 million
pounds of manure and waste each day,more than twice as much as is generated
by residents of the city of Omaha. This volume of manure presents a major pollution
threat to local streams, rivers and groundwater.

Federal slaughterhouse pollution standards are weak and enforcement is lax
The federal Clean Water Act requires the EPA
to update industry-wide water pollution standards for slaughterhouses to keep pace withadvances in pollution-control technology. But
the EPA has failed to carry out this responsibility, putting our water at risk:• The EPA last updated water pollution standards more than 15 years ago for the largest slaughterhouses.
• An estimated 38 percent of meat and poultry facilities are still allowed to discharge
pollution under EPA standards set in 1975.
• The existing standards are weak. For example, slaughterhouses can release wastewater with more than twice the concentrationof total nitrogen found in raw household
sewage directly into streams and lakes.
An analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project of 98 of the biggest slaughterhouses thatdischarge directly to waterways found multiple
violations of the Clean Water Act.
• Between January 2016 and June 2018, threequarters of the slaughterhouses exceeded
at least one of the pollution limits in theirfederal permits, committing 1,142 violations
in total.
• At least 18 of the facilities reviewed werein violation for more than 100 days duringthat period, and six were in violation of one
or more monthly pollution limits at least 50
percent of the time they were in operation.
• Of 98 large slaughterhouses, almost a third
released wastewater that violated theirClean Water Act permits for bacteria, including fecal coliforms, E. coli, and enterococcus.

Water pollution standards for the largest slaughterhouses were last updated in 2004.

The nation needs stronger slaughterhouse water pollution standards
and tougher enforcement
Slaughterhouses present an urgent andgrowing threat to water quality. According
to the Environmental Integrity Project, morethan 60 percent of the waterways receiving discharges from the largest slaughterhouses are already too polluted for fishing,swimming or other designated uses. Clearly, stronger standards are needed to keepour waterways clean. Yet, in 2019 the EPA
decided not to update the federal waterpollution standards for meat and poultry
processing plants, despite Clean Water Act
requirements to do so.
The EPA last updated pollution standards
for the largest agribusiness facilities in2004. Technology is available to dramatically reduce pollution: some major slaughterhouses already release wastewater withless than one-third the permitted amountof nitrogen.
And, given extensive pollution exceedances by large slaughterhouses (even under
today’s weak standards), protecting ourwaterways will also require much stronger
enforcement action.

Find more information online:
www.EnvironmentAmerica.org
Photo credits: p1: Watershed Post via Flickr, CC BY 2.0; Clermont County, Ohio, via clermontcountyohio.gov; p2: NOAA; p3: David Wilson via Flickr, CC BY 2.0; p4: USDA.