Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE 12/19/19

Green groups including Environment America, Food & Water Watch and the Center for Biological Diversity filed the lawsuit in a U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., challenging the agency's Oct. 24 decision not to revise federal pollution standards for slaughterhouses that dump wastewater directly into U.S. waterways.

— Under federal clean water laws, the EPA is supposed to review its slaughterhouse water pollution standards every year to determine whether updates are needed to reflect newer technology or methods for controlling pollution.

— But the agency last updated the standards 15 years ago, and more than a third of slaughterhouses that discharge waste directly into rivers and bays are still operating under guidelines from the mid-1970s, according to the environmental coalition.

The Environmental Integrity Project last year released a report claiming that 75 percent of those plants had exceeded legal dumping limits but faced little or no enforcement. Wastewater from meatpacking plants can be tainted by blood, oil and grease and carry pathogens, nitrogen or phosphorus pollutants, the groups said. Read their statement here.

The Agriculture Department is facing a separate lawsuit over its new rule to overhaul pork slaughterhouse inspections. A group of environmental and animal welfare groups filed the challenge in a U.S. District Court in New York on the grounds that USDA's actions violate procedural guidelines as well as federal laws governing meat inspections and humane slaughter methods.