(AP)  There is nothing preventing a northwest Missouri horse slaughter plant from opening, a lawyer for the facility’s operator said Monday, despite a host of legal challenges and a question about the facility’s wastewater disposal permits.

A federal judge in New Mexico last week cleared the way for equine slaughterhouses to resume operating in the U.S., dismissing a lawsuit by the Humane Society of the United States and other animal protection groups against the federal Department of Agriculture over planned plants in New Mexico and Iowa. The groups, along with the state of New Mexico, quickly filed an appeal on Friday as well as an emergency injunction request.

“It appears to us that the Missouri wastewater permit effectively doesn’t allow Rains to process horses,” said Clayton attorney Stephen Jeffery, who represents a Daviess County resident and two horse rescue groups that challenged the state’s permitting process in a Jefferson City lawsuit.

But Albuquerque attorney Blair Dunn, who represents Rains along with the Valley Meat Co. in Roswell, N.M., said his client was in negotiations with the Missouri DNR and the city of Gallatin, which has provided its own discharge permit that would allow Rains to operate the plant as long as it sends its wastewater to a municipal disposal plant.

“There is nothing prohibiting the plant from beginning operations, nor the government from sending in inspectors,” Dunn said Monday.

Horse slaughterhouses last operated in the U.S. in 2007 before Congress banned the practice by eliminating funding for plant inspections. Federal lawmakers restored those cuts in 2011, but the USDA has been slow in granting permits, citing the need to re-establish an oversight program.

The debate over a return to domestic horse slaughter centers on whether horses are livestock or companion animals and what is the most humane way to deal with the country’s horse overpopulation, particularly in the drought-stricken West. Supporters say it is better to slaughter unwanted horses in regulated domestic plants than to ship them to sometimes inhumane plants in Mexico. The companies want to ship horse meat to countries where it is consumed by humans or used as animal feed.

(AP) — A federal judge in Albuquerque has cleared the way for horse slaughterhouses to begin operating in the U.S. again.

U.S. District Judge Christina Armijo on Friday threw out a lawsuit by The Humane Society of the United States and other animal protection groups. They alleged that the Department of Agriculture failed to conduct proper environmental studies when it issued permits to Valley Meat Co. in Roswell, N.M., and an Iowa company to slaughter horses for human consumption.

The decision ends, for now, a two-year battle by Valley Meat to open the horse slaughterhouse.

The Iowa company converted to cattle because of the court fight. But attorneys say Valley and a third company in Missouri are poised to open as soon as next week.

The companies want to ship horse meat to countries where it is consumed by humans or used as animal feed.