MMO #120 – Sewage Milk

Millennial Media Offensive

Bugs, Wars, and redefining Democracy. It’s a crazy world we live in. MMO #120 focuses on wild swath of new happenings around the globe this week. The West help democracy by defeating it, Ukraine needs more stuff including warm bodies. Germany is seeing a rise in Authoritarianism. Georgia continues to heat up. Lindsay Graham blows his top on the news and israel.

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Shownotes Ep 120

Birdbrain Flu

Celine Gounder on CBS Bird Flu

Gazatho

NBC Report

ABC Report

Ukraine

Russian Offensive – DW

>Kharkiv region is a major O&G pipeline hub – feeds 3 lines into Ukraine

>Russian Def. Minister promoted, replaced by Economic advisor

Anduril Founder on Bloomberg

Trade

Katherine Tai on Tariffs

Inflation

Speech

Election Interference Taskforce

Portal

Information

Indian YouTuber on Elections, Information Enviornment

Politics

Kamala Stupid

Stay Hard MO Sec of State

Misc

Roastie Teachers

Blinken Puts on Rock Show in Kiev

EMAIL FROM FLIBBERTYGIBBIT

Here's my personal story:
My husband and I bought a piece of property in the middle of nowhere Missouri about 1.5 years ago with plans of building a little homestead and becoming as self-sufficient as possible. After living here a few months we began to notice the smell. This was not the smell of the nearby chicken farms, this was an overwhelming smell of decaying flesh and rot. It was so bad we couldn't go outside and at times strong enough that even inside the house would smell utterly foul. It stuck to our hair and clothes, resulted in millions of flies and mosquitos swarming constantly, and was just inescapable.
I started introducing myself to my new neighbors and asking the origin of this rancid odor and learned that it came from a lagoon nearby that was filled with this sludge as well as several surrounding farms that land applied it as fertilizer. I had learned about this stuff years prior due to my interest in sustainable agriculture and was horrified to learn that it was being used on the beautiful farmland in this place that I love.
After getting to know some of my neighbors myself and 3 others decided to try to get something done. We formed S.L.U.D.G.E., a committee dedicated to ending the use of this crap. We set out to educate people in our area about what this stuff actually is and started contacting environmental lawyers and lawmakers to see what we could do.

We filed a lawsuit against the department of natural resources for failure to enforce their own regulations and began working on a senate bill. The bill was manipulated through the political process but did pass the senate 30-1 this past week and now has to go back to the house. There was a lot left out of the bill but it's a step in the right direction. Our lawsuit is still ongoing.

Most Recent article on the bill:

https://missouriindependent.com/2024/05/07/missouri-bill-protecting-rural-neighbors-from-meatpacking-sludge-nears-passage/

Article talking about our lawsuit, not much new recently. Government entities are good at drawing out the legal process.

https://www.cassville-democrat.com/2023/11/14/good-question-no-answer/?fbclid=IwAR0lp6nnsFakgXtq-qIjK8FzwZNlnNdLuktfv7ZTdP7eWCRGi8V0ajCubGc
So what is this shit?

Well, It can be literally shit in some cases, but really there is so much more.
Sludge is a byproduct of the industrial wastewater treatment process. It contains the worst of the contaminants from industrial plants (mostly food manufacturers) that cannot be sent to a standard wastewater processing facility and in some cases can contain the waste removed from municipal wastewater treatment.
The industrial waste includes animal guts, grease trap waste, and the industrial cleaning agents used to clean the facilities among other things. These contaminants are removed from the water with the help of chemical coagulants and flocculants (often containing heavy metals such as aluminum) that bind to the contaminates and allow them to float to the surface or sink to the bottom where they can be skimmed off leaving behind cleaner water that can go through the standard wastewater treatment stream.
Manufactures pay companies to bring in tank trucks to pick up the waste that is skimmed off at the factory and properly dispose of it. The companies that operate in this region are Denali and Synagro, Synagro being the one facing the lawsuit from Texas farmers.
This waste is taken to basins or lagoons where it is combined with waste trucked in from countless other manufactures. At this point it is GIVEN AWAY FOR FREE to farmers to use as a cost effective ORGANIC fertilizer. This fertilizer is most commonly used on land where cattle graze or that is used for hay production. Cattle grazed on land treated with sludge can be classified as grass fed and organic.

So instead of treating the waste to separate organic materials to make useful products and dispose of non useful parts properly, these companies just take the money to dispose of the waste and then dump it on farmland.

In MO there is not much, if any, information given to farmers about what exactly is in this "fertilizer". When it reaches the farmer it contains a good amount of water and is rich in nitrogen due to the organic compounds found in it, such as rotting chicken parts which is admittedly a decent fertilizer. This leads to immediate plant growth and contributes to the marketing of it as a great fertilizer. However, sludge also contains contaminants that can accumulate in soil through repeated land application and cause environmental pollution. Among these contaminants are pathogens, anti-biotic resistant bacteria, and both organic and inorganic chemicals including PFAS and heavy metals. I believe the spread of pathogens and bacteria could have something to do with the bird flu among cattle that has come up in the news recently but I am partial to a good conspiracy theory.

Sludge also contains excessive levels of certain nutrients which can lead to a nutritional imbalance in soil, streams, and rivers. This can cause serious environmental damage such as the destruction of the soil microbiome which makes the soil useless and unable to be farmed and can cause algae blooms in waterways which depletes waterways of oxygen and causes fish kills.

In some parts of the US where sludge has been spread, the Federal Government has classified these farms as “superfund sites”, halting any use of the farmland due to PFA’s and heavy metal content. Michigan Farm contaminated with PFAS from sewage Sludge

To summarize, all the food is poison.