The Poultry Processing Industry: A Study of the Impact of Water Pollution Control Costs

This report presents estimates of costs to poultry slaughtering plants of utilizing wastewater treatment systems to meet likely future effluent limitations and discusses the economic impact of these costs. Data on industry location, water use, waste treatment, and byproduct disposition are provided. For representative plants, wastewater treatment costs ranged from 0.5 to 1.9 percent of average total costs. Plants without municipal treatment would require a total investment of $21 to $60 million to construct the current best available control technology. Wastewater treatment costs of this technology would represent 1.6 to 5.9 percent of average total costs for representative plants. High costs of constructing wastewater treatment systems to meet the effluent limitations will encourage poultry slaughtering plants to seek other alternatives to reduce water use and wasteloads