Washington, D.C. — Today, the national advocacy organization Food & Water Watch sued the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), demanding the agency release records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) related to its abandonment of an Animal Agriculture and Water Quality (AAWQ) Federal Advisory Subcommittee.

EPA formed the Subcommittee in 2024 in response to a Food & Water Watch petition  demanding EPA strengthen its rules to adequately regulate factory farm pollution under the Clean Water Act. To justify its petition denial, EPA claimed it lacked adequate information about factory farm pollution and committed to studying the problem via the Subcommittee. It then repeated this excuse before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in defending the legality of its petition denial. The Subcommittee met three times in 2024, but has not met since Trump took office in January 2025. Trump’s EPA has, with no communication or explanation, rendered the Subcommittee “inactive.”

After more than a year of radio silence, on February 18, 2026, Food & Water Watch requested records about the status of the Subcommittee and what led EPA to abandon it. Requested records include any communications between Trump’s EPA and factory farm industry groups related to the sidelining of the Subcommittee. Nearly eight months later, EPA has refused to produce a single record, in violation of FOIA.

Food & Water Watch Legal Director Tarah Heinzen, a member of the abandoned Subcommittee, issued the following statement:

“EPA has never taken factory farm pollution seriously — under Trump, it has stopped even pretending. The fact that we have to litigate over a FOIA non-response is proof that EPA has abandoned its commitments to address this environmental and public health nightmare.

“Let’s be clear: EPA has more than enough information to know that its factory farm pollution rules are a failure and that it must act. The industry’s waste remains almost entirely unregulated, free to poison drinking water and ecosystems from coast to coast. Yet time and time again, EPA has chosen delay over action. This Subcommittee itself was a delay tactic — its abandonment doubles down on inaction. EPA’s continued stonewalling will not stand in court.”

Food & Water Watch is represented by the public interest law firm Eubanks & Associates, PLLC and its own Tarah Heinzen and Emily Miller.

BACKGROUND

Agriculture is the nation’s leading polluter of rivers and lakes, with factory farms, also called concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), responsible for a significant share. U.S. factory farms produce 940 billion pounds of manure each year — twice as much as the sewage produced by the entire U.S. population. Much of it ends up in waterways, where it contributes to harmful algal blooms and dead zones, threatening aquatic ecosystems.

Factory farm pollution is driving nationwide public health crises, contaminating drinking supplies with pathogens and harmful chemicals including nitrates, which are linked to cancer, birth defects and more. Roughly 1 in 5 Americans on public water systems are exposed to dangerous nitrate levels.

In September 2023, 13 groups, led by Food & Water Watch, sued Biden’s EPA over the agency’s denial of a 2017 Food & Water Watch petition asking EPA to initiate a rulemaking to overhaul its ineffective factory farm regulations. The case challenged the EPA denial of the petition.

The petition and subsequent litigation sought to expand and strengthen factory farm pollution regulation under the Clean Water Act, regulation that the industry has largely evaded for more than 50 years. Today, EPA itself estimates that nearly 10,000 of the nation’s largest factory farms are illegally discharging pollution to waterways without the necessary Clean Water Act permits. Indeed, fewer than one third of the country’s largest factory farms operate with federal water pollution permits. The permits that do exist fail to effectively control the vast quantities of waste these polluting operations generate.

In October 2024, a Ninth Circuit panel ruled against the plaintiffs, accepting EPA’s assertion that findings from the Animal Agriculture and Water Quality (AAWQ) Federal Advisory Subcommittee were needed before EPA could be compelled to act.