The coronavirus pandemic has upended the U.S. food organisation . Shuttered restaurants are squeeze farmers to leave garden truck rotting in fields anddumping out absolutely unspoiled Milk River . It ’s a direful waste in a meter when millions of Americans are losing their Book of Job andresorting to food banks . But official are also implicated that all that milk could have disastrous bionomic consequences .
Wisconsin ’s agriculture and natural resources departments have monish that if raw , unpasteurized milk gets into waterways , it could lower oxygen levels and ensue in fish kills . stream already deal with heavy fertilizer and feedlot runoff , but the Milk River could actually be worse .
“ Milk contains higher concentrations of nutrient than manure and has high biochemical O demand which can do prejudicious impact to surface piss include Pisces kills , ” they read in amemo .
Photo: Getty
https://gizmodo.com/the-coronavirus-outbreak-is-making-dairy-farmers-dump-m-1842685019
We do n’t have to hold off to see what that damage could take care like ; spilled milk , intentional and otherwise , has cause environmental damage in the past . In Minnesota in 2004 , for example , a dairy hand truck tumble caused 6,000 gallons of milk to record a lake and killedthousandsof Pisces . Today , some farms are being forced to dumptens of yard of gallonsof milk per twenty-four hour period . This level of break to the dairy industry , experts say , isunprecedented . And without precautions , the impingement on riverine wildlife could be unprecedented , too .
To avoid kill fish and other aquatic sprightliness — and the rather unpleasant aroma of rotting Milk River — Wisconsin officials notify milk processors to teem their rot milk into “ field of study that have the lowest risk of groundwater or surface - piddle contaminant . ” The departments recommend dump pine away Milk River in manure storage structures , specially when high rainfall is expected that would cause milk dumped in fields to runoff even quicker ( though it should be take note manure computer memory structures — which are often lagoons — aresometimes prone to failureduring in particular high rainfall events ) . The memo also calls for using cock used to spray manure on fields to aid plow with excess Milk River , something that does n’t come out to be find in some places base on photos shared on social sensitive .
In theory , none of this would be necessary if all this surplus could just be rerouted to place where it could still be used . Though schoolhouse , restaurants , and food for thought Robert William Service mercantile establishment are locked down , demand at foodstuff stores and food banks issoaring . But the problem is , in our industrialise agricultural system , it ’s not as mere for supplier to reroute wholesale products that are normally deal to restaurants to stores where they are packaged for individual consumers . It ’s not easy to transport materials to retailers mightily now , either . Manytruckerswho drag dairy products are n’t currently work due to societal distancing precautions . All of this , Reutersreports , is “ creating logistic and packaging nightmares for plants processing Milk River , butter and cheese . ”
Simply put , food supply chain plainly are n’t designed for this variety of crisis . But due to the mood crisis , more global shock absorber are issue forth . peradventure now is the clip to think about how toredesign the food for thought systemto be more live .
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