The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has withdrawn a proposed rule that would have revised technology-based effluent limitations guidelines (ELGs) for meat and poultry products (MPP) industry wastewater discharges.

On Sept. 3, 2025, the EPA posted on the Federal Register an announcement that it is withdrawing the proposed rule ‘‘Clean Water Act Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for the Meat and Poultry Products Point Source Category,’’ which was published in the Federal Register on Jan. 23, 2024.

EPA says effluent guidelines are national wastewater discharge standards the agency develops on an industry-by-industry basis, and are intended to represent the greatest pollutant reductions that are economically achievable for an industry. The standards for direct dischargers and indirect dischargers are incorporated into national pollutant discharge elimination system permits issued by states and EPA regional offices, according to the agency.

The MPP point source category includes facilities engaged in the slaughtering, dressing and packing of meat and poultry products for human consumption and/or for animal food and feeds. Meat and poultry products for human consumption include meat and poultry from cattle, hogs, sheep, chickens, turkeys, ducks and other fowl as well as sausages, luncheon meats and cured, smoked or canned or other prepared meat and poultry products from purchased carcasses and other materials, EPA says.

Meat and poultry products for animal food and feeds include animal oils, meat meal and facilities that render grease and tallow from animal fat, bones and meat scraps, according to the EPA, which evaluated technologies available to control and treat wastewater generated by the MPP industry.

The EPA says it has not identified any practical difference in types of treatment technologies between meat products and poultry products facilities, with some MPP processes producing wastewater streams with higher concentrations of pollutants. But facilities across the industry generally contain the same pollutants, including nitrogen, phosphorus, oil and grease, biochemical oxygen demand, total suspended solids, and chlorides, EPA says.

The proposed regulation that was withdrawn sought to revise the technology-based ELGs for MPP point source category in order to improve water quality and protect human health and the environment by reducing the discharge of nutrients and other pollutants to the nation’s surface waters. EPA proposed several regulatory options, including its preferred option of nitrogen removal that is carried out through a three-step biological process called ammonification in which ammonia is converted from organic nitrogen by hydrolysis and microbial activities; that includes the aerobic conversion of ammonia to nitrate by reacting the ammonia with oxygen in a process called nitrification; as well as converting nitrate to nitrogen gas by reacting the nitrate with organic carbon under anoxic conditions in a process called denitrification.

However, the Sept. 3, 2025 notice announcing the withdrawal of the proposed rule says the EPA decided not to finalize the revised technology-based ELGs or pretreatment standards for the MPP industry because “such revisions would not be appropriate,” a decision that was based on the agency’s “statutory discretion and judgment.”

“In the EPA’s judgment, it is not appropriate to impose additional regulation on the MPP industry, given (Trump) administration priorities and policy concerns, including protecting food supply and mitigating inflationary prices for American consumers following a protracted period of high inflation from 2020 through 2024,” the agency said.

Additionally, the EPA says it considered effluent limitations on chlorides, establishing effluent limitations for E. coli for direct dischargers, and including conditional limits for indirect dischargers that discharge to publicly owned treatment works operating nutrient treatment technologies to remove nutrients.

Furthermore, the EPA said it considered public input before making the decision to not finalize the revised ELGs or pretreatment standards for the MPP industry. Nonetheless, the EPA says its withdrawal of the ELGs and pretreatment standards proposed rule can be challenged in court by filing a petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals within 120 days after the decision is considered issued for purposes of judicial review. For purposes of such a judicial review, the date and time the proposed rule was withdrawn is 1 p.m. EST, Sept. 3, 2025, EPA says.