An update on Cabot Creamery:

[hedgehog]

This is a response I got from the Cabot Creamery -

Dear *****,
I received the message from our Sustainability Director. The information is shown below. Our Senior Vice President of Marketing also suggested the following website - http://www.justmeans.com/companies/cabot-creamery/119428.html . We are discussing the best methods of sharing the truth behind our washwater program. Please feel free to encourage anyone to contact us directly, just as you did. We appreciate the feedback.

Sincerely,

Michael Provost | Customer Satisfaction Manager

1 Home Farm Way | Montpelier, VT 05602

Phone: [phone] | Fax: [phone]

Our land application program applies washwater from our creamery to our farmers’ fields. The washwater is 99.4% water with trace amounts of solids (0.6%). The composition of the solids is 85% dairy nutrients (milk, whey), 12.5% from cleaning/sanitation residuals and 2.5% from the well water. We use only food-grade, FDA-approved cleaners/sanitizers. We do not use any cleaning agents that are categorized as either hazardous or carcinogenic by EPA. Our washwater is tested by an outside laboratory for 40 toxic compounds. All have been certified undetectable but one – that compound (cresol) was measured at 0.66 parts per million, safely and considerably below the EPA threshold of 200 ppm.

Farmers value our land spraying both for the addition of nutrients to their fields (reducing fertilizer needs) and for the irrigation. We spray about 95% of our washwater on farmers’ fields. To be an approved field: each farmer must first agree to participate; we must then have a registered engineer conduct an environmental assessment of each field (to determine proper spraying volumes); ANR must then provide final approval for each field. The remaining 5% of our washwater is permitted to be put into farmers’ manure lagoons, which helps balance the moisture level before manure spreading.

Returning water back into our watershed offers an ecologically-sound solution that has been ongoing since 1990. Our program is a result of collaboration with ANR, UVM, engineering firms and consultants. We are confident that we provide better stewardship of local resources with our existing, well-tested, governmentally-regulated land application program.

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************

I think ANR is Agriculture and Natural Resources (University of California)and UVM University of Vermont.

[kestrel91316]

1. I can't for the life of me figure why anybody would be bitching about

water and whey (organic matter) being returned to the environment. WTF is with people?

Perhaps folks would prefer that it just be flushed down the sewer and wasted.

[hedgehog]

2. The problem is that too many companies have sprayed too many

poisons or given people "free" compost in the past. For example, PCB laden oils were sprayed along dirt roads in the South, GE gave free fill to landowners in the upper Hudson Valley without telling them it was full of PCB. Treated sewage sludge was going to be a wonderful fertilizer for farmers until someone noticed it tends to contain heavy metals. Farmers have long spread manure on their fields, manure from cattle, pigs and chickens fed from crops grown on those same fields. Industrial farms truck in feed from miles around to feed hundreds of animals, then spray tons of manure on a few acres and pretend that this is the same historical practice.

Cabot was cited twice by the EPA for dumping incidents. The last one involved an employee who was trying to be helpful and placed a drum of ammonia outside the collection area so that when the drum overflowed, the ammonia ended up in a storm drain and in the river. Having worked in industry, I can understand Cabot's side of the story and believe they have taken steps to make sure it never happens again. Other people may think that Cabot is just covering up for itself.

It's reasonable to raise questions whenever a company is spraying "waste" material. I have no doubt the stuff Cabot sprays smells pretty bad, my guess is it smells like sour milk. If we can believe what Cabot says, then what they are doing sounds good. I happen to believe that Cabot is telling the truth.

I think we all need to be alert to what is happening around us. We also have to make sure we have the entire story before taking action. I've always thought of Cabot as one of the good guys, a dairy co-op actually run by and for the farmers. I think it's good this story came up here on DU so we could get together and hash it out.


On edit: we have a large number of people here on DU who have a variety of experiences. Sometimes I think I waste a lot of time chit chatting here, but then I recall all the times someone gave an insider's or local's view on a topic, providing information the MSM is too lazy to dig up. I've had my mind changed more than once here. It's a good thing.