PFAS: 'This has poisoned everything' - pollution casts shadow over New Mexico's booming dairy indust

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

‘This has poisoned everything’ – pollution casts shadow over New Mexico’s booming dairy industry

Pollution from Cannon air force base has gone unreported for decades. Now it’s threatening the US food supply

Amy Linn, Searchlight New Mexico
Wed 20 Feb 2019 11.00 GMT

For months, Clovis, New Mexico, dairy farmer Art Schaap has been watching his life go down the drain. Instead of selling milk, he is dumping 15,000 gallons a day – enough to provide a carton at lunch to 240,000 children. Instead of working 24/7 to keep his animals healthy, he’s planning to exterminate all 4,000 of his cows, one of the best herds in his county’s booming dairy industry.

The 54-year-old second-generation dairy farmer learned last August that his water, his land, his crops – even the blood in his body – were contaminated with chemicals that migrated to his property from nearby Cannon air force base.

The toxins, collectively known as PFAS, have caused rampant pollution on military installations, something the Department of Defense (DoD) has known about for decades but routinely failed to disclose. Now New Mexico’s dairy industry is ground zero in an unprecedented crisis. For the first time ever, PFAS is threatening the US food supply.

“This has poisoned everything I’ve worked for and everything I care about,” Schaap said. “I can’t sell the milk. I can’t sell beef. I can’t sell the cows. I can’t sell crops or my property. The air force knew they had contamination. What I really wonder is, why didn’t they say something?”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/20/new-mexico-contamination-dairy-industry-pollution

[safeinOhio]

1. Has a good case...

Needs a great lawyer.

[hunter]

2. I hope Air Force buys his farm for a fair price, what it would be worth unpolluted...

... and award him damages enough for a comfortable retirement.

One less dairy farm is a good thing.

Articles about the dairy industry almost always mention milk for children. Why is that? If I was raising children again milk wouldn't be a significant part of their diet. I remember buying milk by the gallon but I simply didn't know any better then. My own parents bought milk by the gallon when I was a kid, so I did the same with my kids.

My wife and I don't drink any milk. My wife is lactose intolerant, as are most adult humans, those whose ancestors didn't happen to be dairy farmers. I keep a few cans of evaporated milk around for baking, for recipes where nothing else will do, and we use cheese and butter sparingly, more as flavoring than significant nutritional source.

"Factory farm" dairy operations are not making the earth a better place, not for us or our children. The land polluted by PFAs will take a long time to recover, as will the land dedicated to factory farm meat and dairy products.