On January 23, 2024, the Biden Administration weaponized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with a proposed a new rule to regulate 3,879 meat and poultry products (MPP) processing facilities as new inclusions within the EPA jurisdiction. An abbreviated commenting period followed without much notice which closed on March 25, 2024. After that there was an immediate implementation of this new rule change. All of this is similar to what is being attempted in Europe to destroy private farms over there. The World Economic Forum (WEF) globalists justify their actions by claims of wastewater levels of excessive Nitrogen and Phosphorus coming from animal meat processing.
“Standing Up for Kentucky’s Family-Owned Meat and Poultry Processors” – Morning Ag Clips
Almost immediately thereafter Kentucky’s Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Shell and Attorney General Russell Coleman came out in opposition to the Biden Administration’s new rules that targets Kentucky’s meat and poultry processing industry. In a pair of letters, the Kentucky officials condemned both the policy and legality of the rules proposal.
The new rules represent a major shift in the technology-based effluent limitations guidelines and standards (ELGs) for the meat and poultry industry. It threatens the livelihoods of persons in these industries by forcing them to add unnecessary water filtration systems to their facilities. It mirrors the World Economic Forum (WEF) of Klaus Schwab’s agenda to minimize nitrogen runoff from European farms which sparked widespread farmer protests throughout the European Union recently.
This new Biden rule is also a direct attack on the “buy local foods” movement. If local meat producers no longer have a nearby facility to process meat, they will no longer be able to provide their product direct to the customer at local food markets or online. It is estimated that buying local keeps approximately 65% of your dollars spent within the local community.
Currently, the EPA’s ELGs adopted in 1974 and amended in 2004 only applies to about 150 of the 5,055 MPP facilities in the industry. But, in the latest EPA’s Benefit Cost Analysis report it states that “EPA estimates the regulatory options potentially affect 3,879 MPP facilities.” The history of the EPA’s regulation of MPP effluent guidelines and standards has never extended beyond direct discharge facilities so this rule significantly expands their regulatory overreach.
This thrust began about a year ago and the mass media in the back pocket of the Democrats and Joe Biden pooh-poohed it as misinformation. Now we know, they were lying, it was not:
“’A Direct Attack On Our Farming And Our Food Supply’: GOP Lawmaker Lays Into Biden EPA WOTUS Rule” – Forbes March 14, 2023
The Kansas Natural Resource Coalition (KNRC) and other county coalitions such as the American Stewards of Liberty filed comments opposing the proposed rule. KNRC, an organization of 30 Kansas counties, stated the rules will “regulate indirect discharge facilities” which “departs from constitutional and statutory authority” altering the balance between state and federal powers.
They also stated the new rules “gives priority to environmental justice goals and emphasizes ecological benefits, but the EPA jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act is not based on ecological importance or environmental justice.”
Demonstrating the “comment period” was a complete sham to meet formal federal comment requirements, immediately thereafter on March 25, 2024 the EPA jammed through a finalized version of its devastating new modification to the Clean Water Act. It is titled “Effluent Limitations Guidelines and Standards for the Meat and Poultry Products Point Source Category”
This is another case of aggressive, arbitrary, and capricious EPA regulatory overreach. The Biden administration is never one to consider the law but this action is analogous to the recent Supreme Court case of West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, 597 U.S. 697 (2022). This was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court relating to the Clean Air Act. That ruling addressed the extent to which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can regulate carbon dioxide emissions related to climate change. The outcome limited the EPA’s powers for regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
What is so outrageous about this action by the EPA is their claim that after months of research and testing looking for bacteria and viruses, what they actually found in the wastewater of meat processing facilities was Nitrogen and Phosphorus. Anybody who has passed a high school science class knows that these are 2 of the 5 fundamental elements all living things are composed of (Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, & Phosphorus).
From all of that research and testing leading to a bogus conclusion, the EPA then decided the entire agricultural meat industry must now retrofit current facilities with lagoons and biomass dissipates to turn “nutrients” into CO2 and methane in order to prevent these “pollutants” from entering local water supplies. (I thought we were supposed to be reducing our carbon footprint, assuming climate change is real?)
The new EPA rules will, at least, result in the closure of 16 processing facilities across the country at a time when our country’s meat producers are already struggling to survive due to bottlenecks in USDA certified facilities and market demand. But, on the high side, EPA estimates impact range of up to 845 processing facilities. The EPA acknowledges (via the Federal Register) this rule change will have far-reaching impacts up and down the meat supply chain from consumer prices to producer losses.
“Meat and Poultry Coalition: EPA’s Wastewater Guidelines True Cost Is Over $1 Billion and Over 100,000 Jobs” – The Meat Institute
CONCLUSION:
I grew up in the farming community with some of my relatives growing both cattle and chickens, I became a heart patient several years back and was ordered by my heart surgeon to only eat fish and chicken and stop eating red meats. Always the smartass, I asked my doctor after the very sad revelation, “What about bugs?” He smiled and said, “Not enough research on them yet.”
One could safely say I no longer have as much skin in this game as I once did but I am against the bogus climate change cult and the Nazi’s of the WEF so I oppose Biden’s EPA now.
What I was referencing was Nazi Klaus Schwab (his father really was a Nazi) and his WEF wanting us to all transition to eating bugs to save the world from greenhouse gases because of, well you know, cow farts.
“You Will Eat Ze Bugs!” – Coach Corey Wayne (Rated Not Safe for Young Children by Schwendau)
Given the fact that Joe Biden has illegally and unconstitutionally opened our borders and we now have had an invasion of anywhere between 5 to 10 million new souls to feed in this country, how does impeding our food producers help this situation, Joe?
Build Back Better is looking more and more like Bust Bank Broke.
Copyright © 2024 by Mark S. Schwendau
