The coronavirus pandemic has upended the U.S. food system. Shuttered restaurants are forcing farmers to leave produce rotting in fields and dumping out perfectly good milk. It’s a terrible waste in a time when millions of Americans are losing their jobs and resorting to food banks. But officials are also concerned that all that milk could have disastrous ecological consequences.
Wisconsin’s agriculture and natural resources departments have warned that if raw, unpasteurized milk gets into waterways, it could lower oxygen levels and result in fish kills. Streams already deal with heavy fertilizer and feedlot runoff, but the milk could actually be worse.
“Milk contains higher concentrations of nutrients than manure and has high biochemical oxygen demand which can cause a detrimental impact to surface water including fish kills,” they said in a memo.
LINK (via: Gizmodo)
