Farm Animal Transparency (FAT)’s weekly Environmental Watch — a digest of environmental permits, litigation, and settlements involving companies in the meat, poultry, and seafood supply chains. Full details, classifications, and sources for every matter live on the Environmental Watch tracker.

Three items this week: a clarification of what the Tenth Circuit actually did in the Oklahoma poultry-litter case, a backfilled Oregon DEQ civil penalty against Pacific Seafood that predates this tracker, and one new matter — a Texas Attorney General suit over odor and air violations at a Bastrop rendering plant. Every other tracked matter is unchanged. Details below.

Oklahoma poultry-litter settlement: the August order was a “limited remand,” not just a stay

Last week FAT reported, via a single news account it could not independently verify, that a district-court judge had directed the parties to “justify” accepting the July 10, 2026 settlement. This week, secondary reporting (DTN Progressive Farmer, Sept. 10; Meatingplace) clarifies what actually happened: the Tenth Circuit’s August 19, 2026 order was a limited remand — it directed the district court “to consider the parties’ request for relief from the judgment in light of the changed circumstances in the first instance,” denying the motion to vacate without prejudice so it can be renewed based on the district court’s decision. Read together, last week’s reported district-court order is simply the district court doing what the Tenth Circuit asked — deciding whether the settlement with Tyson Foods, Cargill, George’s, Peterson Farms, Cal-Maine, and Simmons Foods justifies vacating the December 19, 2025 judgment against them. It is not a new or separate development. FAT still has not obtained the primary N.D. Okla. docket text or a specific briefing schedule — both the news site and CourtListener remained inaccessible to this scan — and will keep trying. The settlement’s classification is unchanged: not final, with the six-month vacatur window closing on or about January 10, 2027. Full tracker page →

Pacific Seafood: a $3.2 million Oregon DEQ penalty FAT had not previously reported

While searching for this week’s developments, FAT identified an Oregon Department of Environmental Quality enforcement action that predates this tracker (which began July 30, 2026) and had not been captured: in April 2026, Oregon DEQ assessed civil penalties totaling $3.2 million — its second-largest ever — against three Pacific Seafood-affiliated processing facilities: Charleston, OR ($2.9 million, for missing a court-ordered wastewater-treatment deadline and continuing to release fish waste), the Warrenton, OR/BioOregon Protein plant already named in a separate citizen Clean Water Act suit ($104,800, for chlorine discharges and unsubmitted monitoring reports), and the now-closed Brookings, OR plant ($114,000, for fish-waste and chemical releases into the Chetco River). This agency penalty is a distinct proceeding from the citizen suits already tracked here, though it involves the same corporate family. Pacific Seafood had 20 days to appeal; FAT has not yet confirmed whether it did, so the penalty is not treated as final. Separately, Oregon’s legislative Coastal Caucus publicly asked DEQ in June 2026 to ease up on Pacific Seafood — political advocacy, not a legal ruling. Full tracker page →

New matter: Texas sues Darling Ingredients over a Bastrop rendering plant’s odors

FAT is adding State of Texas v. Darling Ingredients, Inc. — a civil enforcement suit Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed on February 5, 2026 against the animal rendering plant in Bastrop, Texas, which turns poultry byproducts (raw chicken, blood, feathers) and used cooking grease into feed and fertilizer. The state alleges Texas Clean Air Act violations — including excessive hydrogen sulfide emissions, equipment-maintenance and recordkeeping failures, and noncompliance with a prior order to submit an odor-control plan — following hundreds of resident complaints of odors reportedly detectable up to ten miles away. The state seeks civil penalties, a cessation order, and real-time hydrogen-sulfide monitoring. Reporting from late February 2026 noted the company had begun facility improvements; FAT located no settlement or ruling since. These are the state’s allegations; no court has adjudicated liability. This matter predates FAT’s tracker and was surfaced in this week’s new-matter search; it is digest-only for now pending Dirk’s decision on a tracker page. Full Environmental Watch index →

No change this week

FAT located no new developments this week on: the Oakridge Dairy digestate-storage permit in Somers, Connecticut; Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help v. EPA (D.C. Cir. No. 25-5354 — no oral-argument scheduling order located); the criminal Clean Water Act case against the Naguabo, Puerto Rico slaughterhouse (United States v. Ganaderos Borges, Inc.); the Pacific Seafood citizen suits themselves (beyond the DEQ backfill above); Waterkeeper Alliance v. EPA, the Ninth Circuit challenge to EPA’s withdrawal of the proposed meat and poultry effluent-guidelines update; the Center for Biological Diversity’s Weld County suit over the JBS Greeley beef slaughterhouse’s air permit; or the Perdue AgriBusiness PFAS litigation and wastewater-permit expansion request in Salisbury, Maryland. All remain as previously reported — allegations only, no adjudicated violations. REACH v. EPA tracker → · Waterkeeper v. EPA tracker →

FAT also reviewed its North Carolina swine-CAFO regulatory cluster this week — the EMC rulemaking watch following N.C. DEQ v. N.C. Farm Bureau Federation, the EPA Title VI complaint over Duplin/Sampson County digester permits, Randolph Cnty. Bd. of Educ. v. Stein and the paused Smithfield-funded grants program, the animal-waste general-permit renewal, enforcement posture after the Farm Act’s repeal of the swine Violation Points System, and the Align RNG digester buildout — checking each source directly (DEQ’s rulemaking docket, its Title VI page, and current court reporting). No genuine movement was found on any of the six threads this week. Background on this cluster is in FAT’s briefing North Carolina’s Hog CAFOs in 2026: A Regulatory Record That Closed, and a Label That Never Opened.

Also on FAT’s watch list: Shenandoah Valley Organic (the “Farmer Focus” chicken brand) in Harrisonburg, Virginia — repeated pretreatment-permit notices of violation reported June 2026. No escalation to formal enforcement located this week. Not yet a tracker matter.

Dates to watch

• Coming weeks — the N.D. Okla. district court’s decision on remand whether to vacate the December 2025 Oklahoma judgment in light of the settlement.
• October 1, 2026 — extended deadline for attorney-fee motions in the Oklahoma district court.
• November 9, 2026 — MDE public-comment period closes on Perdue AgriBusiness’s Salisbury wastewater-permit expansion request.
• Fall 2026 — possible oral-argument scheduling in the D.C. Circuit animal-waste air-emissions appeal; a ruling on residents’ sanctions motion in the Perdue AgriBusiness PFAS litigation.
• On or about January 10, 2027 — the Oklahoma settlement’s six-month vacatur window closes; without vacatur and dismissal, the settlement becomes unenforceable.

FAT keeps the most recent six months of weekly Environmental Watch reports published. Older reports are archived and available upon request — email dirkadams@farmanimaltransparency.com. See all tracked matters at the Environmental Watch index.