A tour of local dairy - getting to know our food sources

I am a firm believer in trying to buy almost all of my groceries from local sources and so far I'm probably at around 80%, which is pretty good. I decided to up it a notch by not only buying local but also touring my local suppliers. This week I visited Calder Dairy.

First let me say this is a rare privilege. I can't think of any other dairy sources I can just drive up and walk around in. I have to admit I was expecting something a little more Disney like and sterile, what I found was an actual working dairy with a few amenities for the visiting families but over all a honest to goodness practical working dairy farm. After looking at this farm and seeing their operations, I appreciate their openness and hard work. They have a few areas they can improve on but their transparency is honorable, and anything mention here can be improved or changed. The dairies not open to the public, or too far for me to access, are not transparent for me so I will stick to what I know over what I don't in this case.

My preference would be to buy organic raw milk, but the organic milk I have access to comes in plastic bottles and is trucked too far for this locavore. Raw milk is available but I have to drive out to get it, I try to be as carless as possible. I pick Calder's milk up at the local co-op which is only a 10 minute walk from my home. Calders' still has home delivery and glass bottles that are returned to the dairy and reused so I choose to buy their milk. I buy their minimally processed "nonhomogenized" milk to avoid further processing, which means there are cream blobs floating in my coffee. I'm ok with that.

Calder Dairy is located on a small paved road surrounded by a very impressive community. The neat houses with big gardens and spotless properties were a huge change from the large landfill, many trailer parks and used car dealerships I passed on my way there. This little community gave the feeling of generations of hard working and conscientious people with a long sense of tradition and history.

My first impression of the farm was a surprise to me. I expected something bigger, more commercial and slick. I've been on many farms over my life and here felt like I was thrown back into the fifties in someways. Very cool folk art wooden statues on the road in welcome you and immediately let you know this farm has been around for awhile. A pond loaded with geese and ducks has a covered picnic table area where families can sit out of the sun, enjoy their ice cream, made on the premises and feed the geese. The property is littered with carved wooden animals kids can play on and a grassy area shaded by trees. Goats, ducks, chickens and geese freely roam the property.

My first stop was the general store that sells all of their products. They have much more available than I knew. Cottage cheese, salted and unsalted butter, half and half in cool bottles to name a small selection. I had not seen their ice cream before and decided to try it. A dedicated label reader I was disappointed that much of their ice cream was not for my consumption. First impulse was to order the caramel cappuccino but the caramel had HFCS as did a few of their other flavors and there was no coffee listed in the ingredients. The blue ice cream I realized was exactly that, blue, due to their coloring ingredient added, I was hoping for blueberries. So I settled for chocolate which had few ingredients and I could identify all of them. I enjoyed this ice cream until I got towards the bottom where another ice cream flavor appeared. My guess is the girl that served me didn't rinse between scoops. Coming from the food industry I took issues with that.

There are a few other areas I was uncomfortable with. The animal pens where the horses, goats and some nondairy cattle were looked as though they were never rotated. All they had was dirt to live in and I saw no additional pens they could be rotated to. The calf pens and the immature dairy cattle barn seemed to me to need a more regular mucking then I saw.

Watching the milking, while again a rare privilege, also made me a tad squeamish. The cows certainly knew the routine and went into the first open milking corral available to them like pros. The cattle when I got there were all pressed into a holding pen that led to the milking room. Here they had zero space to move. I know they were only there for a short time and seemed perfectly happy upon being milked and released to patiently wait in line for an automated brush that they knew how to manipulate and clean them off. My issue is that while in this pen when they defficated or urinated often on the cows around them. Wait for it, I'm not done.

The three men milking the cows wore gloves. One let in the alloted number of cows and the other two positioned them and prepared them for milking. In this process they touched the dirty cows to help them enter the stall or to get thier attention. One of these men was constantly stroking/touching the cows and then looking at the goop on his gloves from the cow, wiping his hands on his pants then reaching for the antibacterial cleaning swab to clean the teats, disposing of the disposable tissue then using his dirty gloved hand to hand milk the teat, which is necessary to check for mastitis. He then put the milking machine on the teat. This touching of the teat and machinery with the dirty glove is to me the reason for pasteurization. Nothing a little more attention from the management can't clean-up but once again the use of the gloves is not fully understood or effective in preventing cross contamination.

Calders states that they do not use Bovine Growth Hormones and feed the cattle what they grow on the farm. I am not sure this is exclusive all year or the only fed they get and the little area I saw growing was corn. I am unsure what their diet is and would prefer pasture, grass fed over grain fed. I'm surprised that these few cows can produce all the Calder Dairy products and think there may be more cows else where but I did not talk to anyone while at the farm and these are my own thoughts. Each cow produces quite a lot of milk and are milked twice a day so I could be overestimating Calders production needs.

Having the farm open to the public is important. There were many families who brought their children and from the conversations in the milking observatory their intent was to teach their kids where their food came from. You could see the children having a hard time relating the milk they knew at home and in the stores as being produced by these cows. I used to visit a farm a lot as a child and they also had dairy cattle among many other animals and it smelt a little sweeter than Calders.

My trip to Calders was eye-opening and a surprise to me, and we should all start to find out about our food sources and hope that all of them are as transparent as Calders. I value that they provide services like home delivery, glass refillable bottles, and a farm I can walk around on and ask questions. They are truly community based and involved company and I will keep buying their dairy products and try to take a few children out with me next time.

CPSC Releases Names of Toxic Chinese Drywall Manufacturers

Published: May 26th, 2010 •  

Federal investigators say they have identified the specific companies that imported the Chinese drywall products that are emitting high levels of sulfur, damaging electrical equipments and releasing foul odors in thousands of homes across the U.S. 
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) released drywall testing results on Tuesday, which identify a number of companies as manufacturers of the toxic drywall. All of the drywall found to be releasing high amounts of sulfur were made in China.
According to the CPSC, federal investigators have received more than 3,300 complaints from across the United States from homeowners who say that toxic Chinese wallboard imported between 2004 and 2007 releases sulfuric odors, causes health problems, and corrodes wiring and appliances. Many of the problems with the Chinese drywall have been confirmed by laboratory testing.
Millions of sheets of the toxic drywall were imported from China into the United States due to a domestic shortage caused by a housing boom and construction following a serious of hurricanes that struck the southeastern United States. The CPSC has confirmed more than 6 million sheets were imported into the country in 2006 alone.
Testing performed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) was used to detect emissions of hydrogen sulfide from a large number of domestic and imported drywall. The CPSC says there is a “strong association” between hydrogen sulfide and metal corrosion. Some of the worst Chinese drywall was found to emit 100 times as much hydrogen sulfide as wallboard made in the U.S.
The companies with the most sulfuric drywall included:

• Knauf Plasterboard (Tianjin) Co. Ltd.
• Taian Taishan Plasterboard Co. Ltd.
• Shandong Taihe Dongxin Co.
• Shandong Chenxiang GBM Co. Ltd. (C&K Gypsum Board)
• Beijing New Building Materials (BNBM)

Knauf Plasterboard, Taian Taishan and Shandong Taihe had multiple products which the CPSC considered to be among the worst of the worst.
more here 

To date, Knauf is the only drywall manufacturer who has responded to the lawsuits. Last month, Judge Fallon awarded $2.6 million to seven Virginia families who filed a lawsuit against Taishan Gypsum Co. over imported drywall problems. However, it is unclear how the families will collect, since China does not acknowledge civil lawsuit judgments in the U.S., and the company did not send a representative to court to answer the charges.

Wallboard: No Longer a Dry Subject

By Jim Vallette, Senior Researcher

Healthy Building Network
April 28, 2010

Some building materials are so bland that they draw little notice. Until recently, about the only people who cared about drywall were those who handled it. Beneath paint and other finishes, the boards lay unseen and unconsidered by those living and working in its gypsum cocoon.

Then thousands of complaints erupted, mainly in the Gulf Coast region devastated by the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005. From Florida to Louisiana, people have moved out of their homes. They say that newly installed wallboard is corroding their air conditioning coils, metal pipes and fixtures, and wiring. They blame an egg-like sulfurous odor emanating from the boards for an array of health symptoms, from respiratory distress to heart disease.

Most of the complaints came from homes in which builders installed drywall made in China. These wallboards flooded into the U.S. after the hurricanes and during the housing boom, when demand outstripped domestic production. Most of these boards - over 78 percent in 2006 - were imported from three factories in China run by the German building material giant, Knauf.

Investigations have focused mainly on the symptoms, rather than the causes, of problematic wallboard. Many types of gypsum and additives introduce toxicants into the slurry that becomes wallboard. Understanding and rectifying these root causes is essential for healthy building material evaluation and selection.

Many reports have tied the toxic wallboard in China to natural, mined gypsum that contains higher levels of sulfur than typical of gypsum mined in North America. But other information is pointing toward problems with drywall that implicate far more than a couple of mines in China.

Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell recently filed a federal suit against Knauf. He noted the use of coal-fired power plant waste - fly ash and flue gas desulfurization (FGD) waste - by Knauf and other manufacturers in China. These manufacturing processes resulted in "defective, noxious, and toxic drywall which emits a variety of dangerous chemicals," including formaldehyde, hydrogen sulfide and carbonyl sulfide. The AG's complaint also notes the presence of additives that may contribute to the problem. The use of these additives, and FGD waste, is a common denominator between some of the drywall from China and a lot of the drywall now produced in North America.

Ten of the 44 complaints detailed by the Consumer Product Safety Commission last fall involved drywall made in the United States. CBS News compared U.S.- and Chinese-made drywall by sending samples to University of Florida professor, Tim Townsend. The professor concluded, "The results tell me that we shouldn't just be focused solely on defective Chinese drywall. We need to be backing up and looking at the product of drywall itself."

Federal courts are considering two cases filed by homeowners against National Gypsum and one against Georgia Pacific. In Swidler v. Georgia Pacific, homeowners in Florida say that GP manufactured problematic wallboard in North America using FGD waste. The plaintiffs claim, "[I]t is the synthetic gypsum which is at the heart of the present drywall crisis... Georgia-Pacific used waste material from coal burning power plants to create drywall used in American homes. The use of such waste materials causes the emission of one of several sulfur-based gasses including sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide."

Pollution control equipment, by its nature, captures pollutants like sulfur and heavy metals. These devices have reduced atmospheric releases. But the incorporation of these wastes into products can transfer pollutants into wallboard factories, peoples' homes, and ultimately the wider environment upon disposal.

The use of synthetic gypsum, and the reuse of heavy industrial wastes in building materials, has surged over the past decade. FGD material sales rose from 4.95 million tons in 2000 to 9.3 million in 2006. Wallboard manufacturers set up factories from Florida to Alberta adjacent to coal-fired power plants. This is a symbiotic relationship: power producers are selling waste that would otherwise pile up on-site, and manufacturers are buying the waste at a price far cheaper than they pay to mine and haul natural gypsum.

Agencies from the EPA to DOE have advocated the reuse of coal combustion residues. Government procurement programs, and USGBC LEED ratings, reward builders who incorporate whatever waste the EPA defines as post-industrial waste, suitable for reuse. Most advocates cite the energy savings, and the reduced need to landfill these wastes.
This preferred status is at risk. The EPA is now considering listing fly ash as a hazardous waste.

"We respect EPA's ability and role as a regulator... and are quite sure there is alignment around the beneficial use of fly ash," Scot Horst said this month. However, "if EPA designates fly ash as a hazardous waste, LEED committees will take a look at the rating system."
Due diligence should account for the potential environmental and human health dangers of dispersing industrial waste into commerce.

A December 2009 US EPA study notes, "both fly ash and FGD residues have been identified as coal combustion residues with the potential to have increased mercury and/or other pollutant concentrations from the implementation of new air pollution technology." Gypsum wallboard plants reported a total of 472.8 pounds of mercury releases to the environment in 2008. The top five mercury releases reported in the Toxics Release Inventory all came from wallboard plants that use FGD-derived synthetic gypsum.

As the drywall scandal spreads, we can only hope that civil action and government investigations will determine the manufacturing practices that are to blame, and soon.
"We need to be proactive in looking at all drywall," said Inez Tennenbaum, head of the CPSC. "We are not going to ignore a problem if it is made in America."
Drywall is no longer a dry subject.

Ditch the Chemicals: Make Your Own Perfume from Flowers in Your Garden

It's easy, more affordable, and because you make it yourself, guaranteed to be organic and all-natural.

By Rachel Cernansky | Thu Jun 10, 2010 14:38    In case you didn't know already about the toxic chemicals in many perfumes or missed the recent EWG report, many of the chemicals used in popular fragrances are linked to sperm damage, hormone disruption, and allergic reactions among other issues, or are not even approved for safe use in personal care products.  Really want to spray that all over your body? Especially as we approach summer, when your sweat glands are probably open and ready to invite foreign substances in?    The New York Times has a story about the increasing popularity of DIYers making perfume from homegrown (or wild-picked) flowers. It's interesting to read why and how some people got started, and the settings in which they operate: one Brooklyn woman makes scents at home from herbs she grows at a Bed-Stuy community garden and then sells them at the neighborhood farmer's market. 

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Car sharing - A great way to get around town.

I've been a zip car user for two years now and it is a great way to get a car in a convenient location for a flat fee. If I just need a car for a few hours I walk book online to reserve the car, walk 10 minutes downtown or take the bus, pick up the car, drive and drop the car off when my time is up. Gas, insurance, it's all covered and my time driving the zip car also counts as a driver for insurance if I should ever decide to own my own.

I was also able to add visitors to town on my account so they could drive if they needed to. Visitor from Switzerland in town need to drive for only a few days, no problem with zip.

Looks like I can drive a zip car where-ever they are located so that next trip to Chicago or Toronto, no problem, they have even added London, England to the list. I recommend this company to anyone as a zero waste alternative to car ownership that has zipcar in their area.