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The U.S. Poultry & Egg Association (“Poultry & Egg Association”) announced what it described as a funded research project at the University of Georgia in which:

. . . researchers questioned the role of poultry processing plants in stormwater bacterial contamination.

The Poultry & Egg Association states that the research is part of its comprehensive research program encompassing all phases of poultry and egg production and processing.

The title of the research project is: “Impact and Mitigation of Stormwater Runoff from Poultry Processing Plants.”  The principal investigator was Brian Kiepper, Ph.D., who is a member of the University of Georgia’s Department of Poultry Science in Athens, Georgia.

One of the findings of the report is stated to be the identification of significant levels of coliform bacteria in streams prior to any stormwater runoff in poultry processing plants. The research project concludes that such results indicates that the combination of poultry processing plants to stream bacterial load may be overestimated.

A link to the research project summary can be found here.