July, 02 2019, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Tom Pelton, Environmental Integrity Project, (443) 510-2574 or tpelton@environmentalintegrity.org
Alejandro Dávila Fragoso, Earthjustice, (202) 745-5229 or adavila@earthjustice.org
Darcey Rakestraw, Food & Water Watch, (202) 683-2467 or drakestraw@fwwatch.org
Maia Raposo, Waterkeeper Alliance, (212) 747-0622 x116 or mraposo@waterkeeper.org
Natalia Lima, Animal Legal Defense Fund, (201) 679-7088 or nlima@aldf.org
Betsy Nicholas, Waterkeepers Chesapeake, (202) 423-0504 or betsy@waterkeeperschesapeake.org
Hannah Connor, Center for Biological Diversity, (202) 681-1676 or hconnor@biologicaldiversity.org
John Rumpler, Environment America (617) 747-4306 or jrumpler@environmentamerica.org
Public Interest Groups Launch Legal Action to Protect Waterways from Slaughterhouse Pollution
EPA’s Failure to Update Wastewater Guidelines is Allowing Contamination of Nation’s Waterways
WASHINGTON
Conservation groups today filed a formal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failing to update slaughterhouse wastewater guidelines as required by the Clean Water Act.
More than 8 billion chickens, 100 million hogs, and 30 million beef cattle are processed each year in more than 5,000 slaughterhouses across the country. An estimated 4,700 of these are currently allowed to discharge processed wastewater directly into waterways or to publicly-owned treatment plants.
"Many of these dirty slaughterhouses contribute to impairments in the waterways where they discharge their pollution," said Sylvia Lam, Attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project. "The most polluting plants also release far more pollution than the cleanest plants. EPA needs to step in, set stronger national water pollution standards for meat and poultry processing plants, and level the playing field.
The Clean Water Act requires the EPA to annually review, and potentially strengthen, industry-wide water pollution standards--called effluent limitation guidelines --for slaughterhouses to ensure the guidelines keep pace with advances in technology that reduce the amount of pollution animal processing and rendering facilities discharge into the nation's waterways.
Since at least 2016, the EPA has failed to conduct the required annual reviews for meat and poultry slaughterhouses. The agency last revised a subset of the guidelines for slaughter facilities discharging wastewater directly into rivers and streams in 2004. But some slaughterhouses are still operating under guidelines originally established as far back as 1974.
The EPA has also failed to review whether "pretreatment" guidelines should be developed for slaughterhouses that send their wastewater to publicly-owned treatment facilities.
"Slaughterhouses often release toxic pollutants that impair drinking water supplies around the country," said Peter Lehner, Managing Attorney at Earthjustice. "They are also the linchpin in the highly polluting industrial meat production chain. Nitrates run off from over-fertilized fields growing animal feed; manure lagoons leak and overflow; animal waste is spread on fields and flows into rivers. We need to clean up every stage. We need the government to do its job."
"Some of the world's largest meat companies are dumping huge volumes of pollution into America's rivers, contributing to toxic algae, dead zones, and fecal bacteria that can make swimmers sick," noted John Rumpler, Clean Water Program Director at Environment America.
The slaughtering and rendering processes generate wastewater that is contaminated with blood, oil and grease, and fats that contain oxygen-depleting pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorus, pathogens, and other contaminants. When released into waterways, these pollutants can drive excess algae growth, causing algae blooms that suffocate aquatic life, and turn waterways into bacteria-laden public health hazards.
"At a time when communities, businesses, and citizens across the country are facing the devastating consequences of massive toxic algae blooms, EPA must take urgent action to address the largest sources of pollutant discharges fueling those outbreaks," said Kelly Hunter Foster, Waterkeeper Alliance Senior Attorney. "Slaughterhouses are major sources of this pollution through discharges into rivers and streams, or into city wastewater treatment systems. Our cities' treatment systems often lack capacity and technology to properly treat this waste - overwhelming the treatment systems, increasing pollution and improperly putting taxpayers on the hook for the industry's waste treatment problem."
"The EPA must stop allowing slaughterhouses to treat many of the same rivers and streams we depend on for drinking water and recreation as industrial sewers," said Hannah Connor, Senior Attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Especially in rural communities, the Trump administration's ongoing failure to oversee slaughterhouse wastewater is putting wildlife and public health at risk."
America's largest slaughterhouses are clustered in rural areas, including northeast and northwest Arkansas, central Mississippi, Iowa, northern Georgia, east central Pennsylvania, eastern North Carolina, southern Indiana, and Sussex County, Delaware.
"Scattered throughout our region, there are several slaughterhouses that have discharged high levels of pollutants into our local waterways, violating their permits with little or no enforcement," said Betsy Nicholas of Waterkeepers Chesapeake. "As an example, in a recent 18-month period, a meat processing plant in Pennsylvania violated its water discharge permit 62 times, discharging excessive amounts of nitrogen pollution into a tributary to the Susquehanna River."
Updated regulations would lead to significant improvements in many waterways across the country, especially in those areas of greatest industry concentration.
"Slaughterhouses are some of the country's biggest polluters," said Tarah Heinzen, Senior Attorney with Food & Water Watch. "We will not let EPA continue to let the meat industry off the hook for polluting our waterways."
According to a 2018 report by the Environmental Integrity Project, "Water Pollution from Slaughterhouses," the most technologically advanced plants are the best performing plants, releasing far less pollution than the rest of the industry. Technology to dramatically reduce pollution from the industry clearly exists, but because of outdated guidelines, EPA and state agencies continue to set permit limits that allow slaughterhouses to discharge far too much water pollution. Meanwhile, 60 of the 98 plants reviewed by EIP release their wastewater to rivers, streams, and other waterways that are impaired because of the main pollutants found in slaughterhouse wastewater. In 2016, Environment America found that the processing plants of just a few large agribusiness companies discharged more than 250 million pounds of toxic pollution into America's waterways over a 5-year period.
"The pace and size of today's slaughterhouses create an extremely dangerous environment, in which animals suffer and toxic waste spews into our waterways," said Animal Legal Defense Fund Executive Director Stephen Wells. "This contaminates water for wildlife and surrounding communities at unprecedented rates. The government must do its job to protect people, animals, and the environment -- and stop serving corporate interests at our expense.
The Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice are filing today's notice on behalf of Waterkeeper Alliance, Environment America, Center for Biological Diversity, Waterkeepers Chesapeake, Animal Legal Defense Fund, and Food & Water Watch.
To view the notice letter, visit: https://www.environmentalintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Slaughterhouse-ELG-and-Pretreatment-Guidelines-Deadline-Suit-NOI.pdf
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the "urgent need" for Israel to "de-escalate violence on all fronts."
Dec 12, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."
Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.
"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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Sanders Says 'Political Movement,' Not Murder, Is the Path to Medicare for All
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," he said. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together."
Dec 12, 2024
Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
"The reason we have not joined virtually every other major country on Earth in guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right is the political power and financial power of the insurance industry and drug companies," he told Jacobin. "It will take a political revolution in this country to get Congress to say, 'You know what, we're here to represent ordinary people, to provide quality care to ordinary people as a human right,' and not to worry about the profits of insurance and drug companies."
Asked about Thompson's alleged killer—26-year-old Luigi Mangione, whose reported manifesto railed against the nation's expensive healthcare system and low life expectancy—Sanders said: "You don't kill people. It's abhorrent. I condemn it wholeheartedly. It was a terrible act. But what it did show online is that many, many people are furious at the health insurance companies who make huge profits denying them and their families the healthcare that they desperately need."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system," he continued, noting the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year because they can't get to a doctor.
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
The 83-year-old Vermonter, who was just reelected to what he says is likely his last six-year term, is an Independent but caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. He has urged the Democratic Party to recognize why some working-class voters have abandoned it since Republicans won the White House and both chambers of Congress last month. A refusal to take on insurance and drug companies and overhaul the healthcare system, he argues, is one reason.
Sanders—one of the few members of Congress who regularly talks about Medicare for All—isn't alone in suggesting that unsympathetic responses to Thompson's murder can be explained by a privatized healthcare system that fails so many people.
In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
Two other Medicare for All advocates, Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), also made clear to Business Insider that they oppose Thompson's murder but understand some of the responses to it.
"Of course, we don't want to see the chaos that vigilantism presents," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We also don't want to see the extreme suffering that millions of Americans confront when your life changes overnight from a horrific diagnosis, and people are led to just some of the worst, not just health events, but the worst financial events of their and their family's lives."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
"Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far," she continued. "This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the healthcare to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone."
After facing some criticism for those comments, Warren added Wednesday: "Violence is never the answer. Period... I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder."
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Reports Target Israeli Army for 'Unprecedented Massacre' of Gaza Journalists
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of Reporters Without Borders.
Dec 12, 2024
Reports released this week from two organizations that advocate for journalists underscore just how deadly Gaza has become for media workers.
Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
The organization has also filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court "for war crimes committed by the Israeli army against journalists," according to the roundup, which includes stats from January 1 through December 1.
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of RSF, in the introduction to the report. Since October 2023, 145 journalists have been killed in Gaza, "including at least 35 who were very likely targeted or killed while working."
Bruttin added that "many of these reporters were clearly identifiable as journalists and protected by this status, yet they were shot or killed in Israeli strikes that blatantly disregarded international law. This was compounded by a deliberate media blackout and a block on foreign journalists entering the strip."
When counting the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army since October 2023 in both Gaza and Lebanon, the tally comes to 155—"an unprecedented massacre," according to the roundup.
Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
IFJ lists out each of the slain journalists in its 139 count, which includes the journalist Hamza Al-Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, Wael Al-Dahdouh, who was killed with journalist Mustafa Thuraya when Israeli forces targeted their car while they were in northern Rafah in January 2024.
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