With more than 60% greater attendance than last year, the 2025 US Poultry & Egg Association Environmental Management Seminar provided attendees with insights tailored to the specific challenges that environmental managers face daily, ranging from legal and regulatory challenges to developing talent and reporting sustainability progress. The 2025 Clean Water Awards were also announced.

Joe Miller, general counsel for Rose Acre Farms, provided a legal update for attendees, discussing recent court decisions and upcoming cases that could impact industry. Specific impacts of rulings on nationwide injunctive relief, Waters of the United States rulings, Chevron Deference, Major Questions Doctrine, Prop 12, Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act and the Oklahoma chicken litter case were discussed with a nuanced perspective that distilled dense legal text into understandable, applicable lessons for those in attendance.

A panel discussion, moderated by USPOULTRY Executive Vice President of Regulatory Programs Paul Bredwell and featuring Alex Sullivan, corporate environmental manager for Fieldale Farms Corp., Bill Knapke, environmental specialist for Cooper Farms, and Michele Boney, director of sustainability for West Liberty Foods, covered various opportunities to attract and develop environmental workers. Specific strategies, including tuition reimbursement, individual development plans and management trainee programs, were identified as ways in which to identify and cultivate talent in the environmental sphere.

Water reuse, an ever-important reality for processing facilities, was covered by Warren Howe, vice president for Woodruff & Howe Environmental Engineering. After first reviewing the regulatory requirements for water reuse, including how the regulations exist in practice, Howe explored some of the various applications of water reuse. He also reviewed ways to facilitate water reuse and examined the advantages and potential disadvantages of water reuse, as well as made recommendations for prudent reuse operations.

Ryan Bennett, executive director of the US Roundtable for Sustainable Poultry & Eggs, provided an overview of how the US-RSPE Sustainability Framework can simplify reporting obligations. Recognizing that sustainability initiatives are driven by customers, institutional investors, and activist investors, each with their own agendas, US-RSPE devised a framework for reporting sustainability progress to provide a benchmark measurement across the industry. Bennett highlighted how the framework encompasses many of the concerns shared by processing companies and streamlines reporting. He also emphasized that the framework is a tool to drive improvement in sustainability progress, regardless of the current level of attainment.

USPOULTRY’s annual Clean Water Award winners were also announced during the seminar. The award is presented annually to poultry facilities that excel in their commitment to treating wastewater to standards that meet and often exceed their permit requirements, identifying water reuse opportunities and implementing initiatives to advance the overall sustainability of the facility. Awards are given in two categories, full treatment and pretreatment. This year, Tyson Foods in Danville, Va., was selected as the winner in the pretreatment category and Perdue Farms in Lewiston, N.C., was selected as the winner in the full treatment category.

An honorable mention with distinction in the pretreatment category was presented to Draper Valley Farms, in Mount Vernon, Wash., and an honorable mention with distinction award in the full treatment category was presented to Pilgrim’s in Cold Spring, Minn.

Source: US Poultry & Egg Association