Dairy

A dairy is a facility for the extraction and processing of animal milk (mostly from cows, sometimes from buffaloes, sheep or goats) for human consumption. The end product of such processes are known as dairy products. In Australia a dairy is also a shop or company that sells dairy products. In New Zealand a dairy is a shop selling convenience-food products. A dairy farm produces milk and a dairy factory processes it. Over the years, Dairy has become a multibillion-dollar industry.

Waste disposal

In countries where cows are grazed outside year-round there is little waste disposal to deal with. The most concentrated waste is at the milking shed where the animal waste is liquefied (during the water-washing process) and allowed to flow by gravity, or pumped, into composting ponds with anaerobic bacteria to consume the solids. The processed water and nutrients are them pumped back onto the pasture as irrigation and fertilizer.

Related Topics:
Compost - Anaerobic bacteria - Irrigation - Fertilizer

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Surplus animals are slaughtered for processed meat and other rendered products.

Related Topics:
Meat - Rendered

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In the associated milk processing factories most of the waste is washing water that is treated, usually by composting, and returned to waterways. This is much different from half a century ago when the main products were butter, cheese and casein, and the rest of the milk had to be disposed of as waste (sometimes as animal feed).

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In areas where cows are housed all year round the waste problem is difficult because of the amount of feed that is bought in and the amount of bedding material that also has to be removed and composted. The size of the problem can be understood by standing downwind of the barns where such dairying goes on.

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In many cases modern farms have very large quantities of milk to be transported to a factory for processing. If anything goes wrong with the milking, transport or processing facilities it can be a major disaster trying to dispose of enormous quantities of milk. If a road tanker overturns on a road the rescue crew is looking at accommodating the spill of 10 to 20 thousand gallons of milk (45 to 90 thousand litres) without allowing any into the waterways. A derailed rail tanker-train may involve 10 times that amount. Without refrigeration, milk is a fragile commodity and it is very damaging to the environment in its raw state. A widespread electrical power blackout is another disaster for the dairy industry because both milking and processing facilities are affected.

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In dairy-intensive areas the simplest way of disposing of large quantities of milk has been to dig a big hole and allow the clay to filter the milk solids as it soaks away. This is not very satisfactory, but neither the farmer nor the processor wants to lose that much income anyway! In most cases it is an original failure of the infrastructure (electrical distribution or transport system) that caused the initial disaster.

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