I was alarmed to read that over 150 million tons per year of milk is wasted
This probably applies to other forms of centralised food processing … flour mills, canned fruit, sugar from cane, processed meats.
What are we doing as a society to allow this ? It makes me want to turn back the clock to localised production and consumption.
There was an attempt in my area to re-establish local milk processing and local marketing . It worked for a while, then failed during the covid epidemic for economic reasons.
I think we need to reconsider the way we process our food.
Distributed computing works, why not distributed food chains.?
Here in the US back in 2022 there was a sever shortage of baby food when there was a major recall of baby formula and then 1 of the 3 major formula plant was shut down after reports of bacterial contamination. Panic buying also added to the shortage.
Baby formula is so hard to get and expensive in China - there are people who buy it up here in Australia and mail it home! And in cases, it’s been so organised - bought up in bulk (and shipped to China), it’s created shortages here for local needs! I don’t watch much news, but I remember reading about it a few years back…
One of the issues with the local supply chains for stuff (more vegetables and fruit) is the massive urban sprawl of some cities - Melbourne and Perth for example - the urban sprawl eats up productive land previously used for market gardens - so we then have to ship produce in from out of the state - and it takes 2 days non-stop for a huge refridgerated road train to make it from the East Coast to the West Coast… All so people can get their 1/4 acre of land to grow grass on - that’s all they seem to do… Grow grass, waste water on keeping it green - why? You can’t eat it! And it’s just mowed instead of getting cropped by livestock…
I live in (or very close to) the Swan Valley - it’s mostly grapes for wine - but a fair amount of ground fruit (think melons and strawberries) is grown around there - and there’s a stretch of land nearby devoted to cattle - but - beef cattle, not dairy…
Well, in Sydney you would be lucky to find a block that large. It s down to less than 500m^2.
Growing home vegetables is no longer possible in Sydney, or even in regional towns. That is part the reason we moved out of town. I dont like the modern urban environment. I grew up on a 1/2 acre block with a blacksmith business … it shaped my life.
Yes large cities work against local food chains.
Here we have a local fish market, and farmers produce markets and we used to have local milk processing.
Milk used to be delivered to homes from milk truck and he would leave the milk on the pouch in a special box. The milk would still have some cream in it and would rise to the top of the quart bottle.
In post-war Sydney it was a horse and cart with steel milk containers. Mum used to take a jug out to collect the milk and they measured it out with a ladle. No refrigeration, so they came early morning.
We also had ice, fresh bread and vegetables delivered to the door.
As late as 1970 - in Newcastle (i.e. just north of Sydney) bread was still delivered by horse and cart to some locations - like my school in Merewether (probably to the tuck shop / canteen).
We used to get milk delivered - but I think probably by an internal combustion engine truck / van… I can remember waking up hearing the clink clink of the milk being dtropped off by the front door (probably more so collecting the empties) - or the side door off the kitchen… it would still be dark…
When I was really little (like 3) I can remember a horse and cart going by the side of our house and the baker would sell my mum a wholemeal breadroll and my mum would make me a peanut butter roll for lunch - my mum, and her dad, were big “health food nuts” - so we always had wholemeal or brown bread… I can remember kids teasing me at school for having brown bread sandwiches for lunch! What a ridiculous thing to tease about! Having said that - “brown bread” is Australian (and probably Cockney) rhyming slang for “dead” …
My mum’s dad, my grandpa, had a big chook (poultry) farm on the outskirts of town and he always kept a cow at the back - and once a week he’d bring a flagon bottle full of unpasteurised milk - yeah - I know it’s dangerous - but my grandpa insisted on unpasteurised… So - anyway - we didn’t always need to get milk delivered…
I also remember the “quart” bottles of milk we’d get at school - and we’d carefully peel off the foil top so we could twirl it away (like a tiny frisbee) then there’d be a delicious glob of congealed cream at the top… mmm…
I find it very fascinating to read how it was in other countrys back in the day. Here in Sweden we did not use bottles for milk not where i lived we had and still do use milk cartons but they look diffrent today.
I missed a fair amount of school after 1970 while travelling with my parents - and by the time I went back to school again in 1973 - Grade 6 (in West Australia, not New South Wales) - milk in school had switched from quart glass bottles to triangle / pyramid shaped waxed paper cartons, and you had to use a straw to drink it… and by 1975 the “ubiquitous” 1 litre carton of milk was the default you’d get from the supermarket, or corner shop…
When I was a kid, my dad worked at a dairy plant and I helped out at a friend’s family dairy farm. Here’s what may account for some of that waste:
The dairy sent tanker trucks around to the farms, filling up with milk from several farms, several thousand gallons.
Each farm did a certain amount of testing before pumping the milk into the tanker, but if even one farm missed that the milk tested positive, or too high, for certain bacteria, the entire tanker load might fail its tests at the dairy – meaning that a much larger quantity of milk had to be dumped.
The organisation i work for gets food from 2 diffrent stores that we make free food for many poeople ,it homles people and elderly people with bad pension and others but some stores dont want to give us food they rather throw it away and over all here in Sweden over 100 ton food is thrown away each year,its absolutly nutts.
The thing which makes me angry to no end is that the EU has certain rules on WHAT A FRUIT OR VEGETABLE SHOULD LOOK LIKE!!! If it’s not of the correct shape or color, it gets thrown away, even though it might otherwise be perfectly fine.
The meat industry has ways of dealing with waste. Carcases rejected at the abbatoir go into pet food and fertilizer.
I dont see why contaminated milk cant be treated the same way… there are places other than the human food chain where reject produce can be used rather than dumped .
@thomaslknapp
It is nice to encounter someone with a rural background.
It may be that there are other things they can use milk for if it doesn’t pass the dairy’s tests for being safe. Keep in mind, the last time I really paid any attention to this would have been the late 1980s (my dad retired from the dairy circa 1990, and by then I had moved away and was no longer a part-time farm hand). I assume things have changed since then, but back then I’m pretty sure that “contaminated” milk went directly to a sewage treatment plant, and the dairy paid some kind of surcharge for having it treated and discharged into the environment.
Dreadful solution. It is perfectly good fertilizer… contains nitrogen and calcium. People spray citrus trees with milk to combat pests.
I can remember a load of rabbit carcases arriving at an abbatoir. They were in poor condition … rotton and smelling. They were sent ‘down the road’ to processed meats section … so they ended up in ‘devon’ or ‘cabanossi’ or whatever.
There are ways of dealing with contaminated food.
The wool and textile industries have a good record with waste. A huge amount of wool and cotton fibre is reclaimed from discarded clothing . Lanolin is recovered from wool scouring. Card waste and noils are directed into products like felt.
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