The FDA is not letting the cheese makers be…

I’m well aware of the fact that organic matter uses oxygen in water. I never said that willfully pouring milk into waterways is a good thing – just that it’s a trivial harm compared to the real damage that an oil spill would do – and that the EPA was talking of treating both the same and were shouted down, same as with this equally ridiculous proposal. The stupidity that flows from DC boggles the mind.

By your own numbers by the way, using the mid range for treated waste water, a million gallons a day of that is the same as about 2800 gallons of milk. That would have to be whole tanker truck(s) per day to equal what a small / mid size city would typically outfall in terms of BOD. Fair amounts of dairy farmers here in Western Washington – can’t recall the last time there was a major milk spill into a local creek.

In terms of potential for harm to aquatic life a sizable spill of milk into a water body is a serious matter. The obvious cases would be a failed milk tank next to a river or an accident involving a milk transport truck on a bridge. Surface waters typically contain 12 or less mg O2/L.

Consider the following from http://www.ecifm.rdg.ac.uk/bod.htm

Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD)
If the organic material contained in manure, slurries, silage effluents, waste milk or vegetable washings enters a water course, it is broken down by micro-organisms. This process removes oxygen from the water and in severe cases of contamination, aquatic life can be killed through oxygen starvation rather than direct poisoning.
Wastes from agriculture tend to have a high B.O.D. when compared with treated and untreated domestic sewage:
BOD (mg O2/litre of pollutant)
Treated domestic sewage 20 – 60
Raw domestic sewage 300 – 400
Vegetable washings 500 – 3000
Dirty water (parlour washings, yard run off etc.) 1000 – 2000
Cattle slurry 10 000 – 20 000
Pig slurry 20 000 – 30 000
Silage effluent 30 000 – 80 000
Milk 140 000
The severity of an organic waste pollution incident will depend on the volume of waste and the amount of dilution once in a watercourse.

***
I wasn’t referring to land spills. I don’t believe that milk spills onto land are a matter for concern. Oil spills onto land are bit of a concern but bacterial action will degrade oil over time. One of the tricks of remeditating oil spill contaminated soil is to plow in manure to speed up the bacterial action.

I’m not trying to be confrontational just wanting to educate a bit. Thank you for that opportunity.

Do bureaucrats overreach and need to be questioned? Absolutely.

I’ll pour 55 gallons of milk into a creek. You pour in 55 gallons of used motor oil.

Which will do more damage, both long and short term, and what will the relative damage be?

I’ll pour 55 gallons of milk onto my front lawn. You pour 55 gallons of crude oil onto yours.

Which will do more damage, both long and short term, and what will the relative damage be? I think my damage would be mostly from the neighborhood cats trying to lap up the bounty.

Dairy Farmer “A” spills 1,000 gallons of milk into his farmyard from a ruptured storage tank. Dairy Farmer “B” spills 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel for his tractor from a ruptured storage tank into his farmyard. Which one has a real hazmat problem?

QED – milk isn’t hazmat. And aging cheese as it has been done for thousands of years isn’t dangerous. Stupid, power hungry idiots in DC that come up with these harebrained ideas on the other hand SHOULD be classed as hazmat.

So, now it’s “Guns don’t kill people, Cheese kills people” ? I must have missed that one. Fortunately, you can tell your “f(r)iend” that “We’ll always have Cheez Whiz” (because it appears capable of defying the Rule Against Perpetuities).

It appears that, in reaction, the Feds doubled down and created a crisis.