LINCOLN, Neb. (DTN) -- Environmental groups on Monday asked a federal appeals court to review the Trump administration's final action to impose no additional wastewater discharge regulations on meat and poultry processing plants.

The groups filed their petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In January 2023, the Biden administration released a proposal to revise water pollution standards for meat and poultry facilities to curb nitrogen, phosphorus and fecal bacteria pollution into waterways.

The rule would have updated effluent limitation guidelines and standards, which would have applied to about 180 of 5,300 such plants across the country. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated at the time that the revised rule would have reduced discharges by about 100 million pounds per year.

The Trump EPA announced on Aug. 30, 2025, during a press event at a Minnesota farm that it was pulling the rule.

"This action advances the Trump administration's successful efforts to support a lower cost of living for American families and American farmers while protecting human health and the environment," the agency said in a news release at the time.

The lawsuit this week was filed by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice, on behalf of Cape Fear River Watch, Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help, Waterkeeper Alliance, Humane World for Animals, Food and Water Watch, Environment America, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Animal Legal Defense Fund.

In an Aug. 28, 2025, Federal Register notice, the EPA pointed to concerns about rising food prices for consumers as a reason for pulling the rule.

"In the EPA's judgment, it is not appropriate to impose additional regulation on the MPP (meat and poultry products) industry, given 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.

"The MPP industry is critical to the nation's food supply, and there is a shift in national policy toward ensuring reduction of the cost of living and reinvigorating American industry."

The groups suing the EPA previously sued the agency in 2019 and 2022, trying to force an update to the Clean Water Act to modernize technology standards for water pollution-control systems for slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.

The EPA announced in September 2021 that it would update the standards without committing to a timeline. As a result of the 2022 lawsuit filed by the groups, a consent decree was reached to require the agency to take final action on the standards by the end of last month.

The Trump administration's action received wide support from agriculture interests, including the American Farm Bureau Foundation, National Chicken Council, U.S. Poultry and Egg Association, National Turkey Federation, National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the National Pork Producers Council.

Todd Neeley can be reached at todd.neeley@dtn.com

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