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A federal judge has rejected a petition from environmentalists calling for stricter regulations on large-scale livestock farming, a victory for the U.S. meat industry.
The San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a lawsuit that could change the way the Environmental Protection Agency regulates intensive animal farming operations. pork The production team applauded the decision..
The lawsuit filed and led by Food & Water Watch challenged the EPA’s decision last year to deny a petition requiring all farms to be licensed to operate CAFOs unless they can prove they are not pollutants.
In the petition, the activist groups argued that livestock farms are discharging pollutants into waterways in violation of the Clean Water Act and that the EPA has a duty under federal law to regulate animal waste discharges.
But in its decision, the court agreed with the EPA’s approach to regulating livestock production, including forming a subcommittee to study water quality issues, and said it would “seek information on how best to address the problem” before making new regulations. He said it was important. .
According to the court’s decision, EPA’s current process is “reasonable and rarely conflicts with the requirements of the Clean Water Act.”
Pork producers applauded the move and argued in the Ninth Circuit that the petition was “baseless.”
“Major changes to long-standing federal law can only be made through congressional action, and it is inappropriate for these activist groups to try to rewrite federal law through the courts when Congress has consistently rejected their outlandish demands,” said the National Pork Producers Council. The National Pork Producers Council said: name.
