Why Should Delaware Care?
Mountaire Farms, which operates multiple chicken processing plants in Delaware and elsewhere, is asking state environmental regulators for permission to process more “meat” at its Millsboro-area plant. While company officials claim that won’t significantly increase air pollutants, residents and environmental advocates continue to raise concerns about historical violations at the facility and ongoing odor issues.
Ahead of a community meeting at the Indian River Senior Center in Millsboro on Wednesday night, some of the Mountaire Farms’ closest neighbors were in the dark about what exactly the poultry producer was asking to do.
The three pages of technical information included in Mountaire’s application don’t illustrate or clearly explain why the chicken plant was looking to amend its air permits or if it meant slaughtering more chickens.
What residents learned is that Mountaire Farms is asking state regulators for permission to process up to 800 more tons of chicken guts and carcasses per week at its “resource recovery” plant, which is part of the company’s poultry processing complex near Millsboro.
Currently, the resource recovery plant is permitted to process 4,200 tons of leftover chicken parts, including blood and feathers, every week into ingredients for a variety of products such as fish food and lubricants. Mountaire wants to increase that weekly allowance to 5,000 tons — but also indicates in the application that there will be no anticipated change in the amount of blood or feathers that go through the plant – just more “meat.”
Tanya Rogers Vickers, Mountaire’s senior director of environmental science, said those bird parts come from the onsite slaughtering and processing at the Millsboro-area plant as well as Mountaire’s facility in Selbyville.
“We’re just asking for a little operational flexibility,” Vickers said.
She insisted Mountaire isn’t planning to slaughter more chickens or add new products to the mix, but rather looking for week-to-week flexibility to address weather events or market conditions that could mean slower production one week and an excess the next.
Permit seeks to increase carcass rendering
Regardless, if Mountaire’s request is granted, the amended permit would allow the company to release additional air pollutants that come along with rendering up to 800 additional tons of chicken carcasses — weighing around the same as 45 fully loaded public buses — each week.
According to Mountaire, the resource recovery plant, constructed in 2011, includes equipment such as thermal oxidizers and scrubbers that use high heat processes to eliminate a majority of odors and pollutants created by converting raw feathers and chicken carcasses into animal feed ingredients.
Adding more carcasses, according to an equation provided by the company, would reportedly lead to decreased emissions of volatile organic compounds and particulate matter, according to emissions data included in the company’s application for a permit amendment. The calculations in Mountaire’s permit are based on testing of emissions conducted in 2013, when the plant was still relatively new, according to the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC).
In an email Thursday, a DNREC spokesman said that meat, compared to other components like blood and feathers, “burns cleaner in the thermal oxidizer.”
“Increasing meat in the recipe reduces overall [pound per ton] emissions because of that,” he wrote.
Regulators refused to answer additional questions about the equation and who is responsible for regulating the products that come into the plant.
Community brings questions, concerns
About four dozen people, roughly a quarter of which included representatives from the company and state agencies, attended the in-person-only meeting, which included prepared presentations by DNREC’s Division of Air Quality and Mountaire.
Residents raised concerns about previous environmental violations at the plant, which have resulted in federal consent orders, lawsuits and multimillion-dollar settlements, widespread health concerns and a contaminated groundwater system.
“Our history of dealing with Mountaire and DNREC is a disaster,” one resident said during the two-hour meeting. “We don’t feel any level of truth in anything.”
On Herbert Lane, which borders the plant, families are still dealing with tainted drinking water. They said it still smells worse than it ever has outside on some days — especially at night. Most of the residents who spoke up at the meeting complained of continued odor issues in the area and ongoing health problems.
“When you consider air quality, do a census on how many people in Sussex County have asthma, bronchitis, lung disease,” said resident Gina Burton, whose son died in 2014 due to an acute asthma attack. “You can replace water with bottled water but you can’t replace air. You can’t give people a bottle of air.”
In addition to the plant’s history of wastewater-related violations, state regulators have also cited Mountaire for excess emissions and equipment shortfalls at this resource recovery plant as recently as 2023.
Christopher Heaney, an environmental epidemiologist from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, offered to “provide scientific guidance” for any residents interested in monitoring pollution potentially related to the state’s powerful poultry industry.
Emissions from the plant include hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, hydrocarbons and dust (aka particulate matter), which can negatively affect the health of workers and nearby residents by causing or exacerbating respiratory conditions such as asthma or other illnesses such as heart disease.
By increasing processing at the resource recovery plant to 5,000 tons of meat per week, Mountaire estimates they’ll still be processing some 1,176 tons of feathers and 588 tons of blood — the same exact amount that was estimated with the current processing cap that includes just 4,200 tons of meat. Company officials insisted that while there may be fluctuations week-to-week, annual totals won’t change, despite the requested permit limit increase.
“While this permit does not reflect any intention to increase our overall production at our facilities, it does reflect Mountaire’s commitment to investing in best practices that further enhance our business, our products, and our community,” Mountaire spokeswoman Catherine Bassett said in an emailed statement.
Company officials said there are no anticipated annual changes to water use or wastewater output related to the permit amendment.
DNREC currently allows Mountaire to process up to 310,128 tons of slaughtered chickens at its rendering plant. If approved, the proposed expansion would bring that annual limit to 351,781 tons per year.
“We have to issue the permit based on the worst case,” explained Amy Mann with DNREC’s Division of Air Quality. “Mountaire can say we’re not intending to do more, but we always permit on a worst-case scenario.”
