When the USPOULTRY Clean Water Awards judging team reviewed the past two years of process wastewater effluent data from Koch Foods' Gadsden, Ala., facility, it was not only impressed by the treatment plant's 100 percent compliance with Alabama's direct surface water discharge permit but also how efficiently the plant was being operated by Koch's environmental staff.

When Marshall Durbin Sr. made the decision in 1932 to add live poultry to his two retail fish stands in Birmingham, Ala., he set his fledging food company on the path to become what is today the United States’ 19th largest poultry producer. Marshall Durbin Companies generated $326 million in sales during 2011, employs 2,000 people and operates two poultry processing plants in Jasper, Ala. and Hattiesburg, Miss. The company produces a RTC volume of 7.65 million pounds per week, with 65 percent of that production supplying the food service industry.

West Liberty Foods achieves sustainable poultry and meat production for Subway customers using novel technologies for wastewater pretreatment. As the leading supplier of sliced sandwich meat to Subway restaurants across the country, West Liberty Foods is on the cutting edge when it comes to large-scale, state-of-the-art advanced meat processing. The company’s commitment to being an industry leader in ready-to-eat meat processing extends beyond the processing floor at its Mount Pleasant, Iowa, facility and into the plant’s environmental wastewater pretreatment system, which was a key factor in earning the facility the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association’s 2012 Clean Water Honorable Mention Award in the pretreatment category.

Sanderson Farms, the third largest poultry producer in the U.S., is committed to taking a fresh approach to everything it does, and not only where its poultry products are concerned but company wide. That approach earned the Laurel, Miss.-based company the prestigious Clean Water Award at its lone further processing plant located in Flowood, Miss.

The US poultry industry is putting renewed focus on screening of wastewater as a cost-effective means of removing solids, and the technology has potential in other countries.