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HomeMy WebLinkAboutTimes Advocate, 1991-09-04, Page 10Page 10 Times -Advocate, September 4, 1991 Dumping the untreated milk - house wash water into a drainage ditch or stream is the same as pour- ing 600 boxes of phosphate laundry detergent into the same stream. So says an article in a recent is- sue of the Ontario Milk Producer, an excellent monthly publication from the Ontario Milk Marketing Board. I make the statement with a cer- tain amount of humble pride be- cause the two people in charge of the magazine, editor Bill Dimmick and assistant editor Karen Mantel along with the milk board's assist- ant director of communications and planning, Bill Mitchell, are all graduates of a college journalism program with which I was intimate- ly connected for lo, those many years. Awright, awright. So, I digress. I'm getting old and crotchety. Eld- ers are allowed to digress., An article in the Milk Producer about getting rid of waste caught my attention. Milk, as any mother and many fathers, can tell you, can be difficult to work with. Wipe up spilled milk and the cloth begins to give off an unpleasant aroma very soon if it isn't washed. At one time, figures from the joint U.S.-Canada commission on the Great Lakes suggested that ful- ly 50 percent of the phosphorous polluting the Great Lakes came from faun runoff, especially from dairy farms. I know because I sat on that commission briefly. Farmers, always ready and capa- ble of taking action,, have cut that figure dowU in the last decade. The article says that farms are the source for less than 12 percent of the phosphorous in water courses today, a tremendous improvement. It can be reduced even more, ac- cording to the owner of a farm near Plattsville, Ont. Bill Weicker says he now saves the first rinse from his pipelines instead of put- ting in into his septic tank system. He was told to catch the fust rinse of his milking pipeline with a five -gallon pail. The milk can then either be used to mix up milk re- placer or fed to the calves. Welch- er maintains he keeps as much as 95 percent of the milk out of the septic system. Letting all this milk go into the septic bed can clog it up in less than five years. Of course, if you haven't got a septic system, you are in trouble. You are contributing too much to that 12 percent of polluting phos- phorous still going into the Great Lakes. A septic system is the only envi- ronmentally responsible method of getting rid of milk says Mitch An- derson, a graduate student in Land Resource Science at the University of Guelph and the person who suggested taking the first rinse off. What you get is warm, milky water, most of it milk. I imagine many farmers are or have been doing this for years but it was the first time I had read about it and I have been visiting dairy farmers for too many years than I care to count. In fact, I don't think I can count that high. I'm ter- rible with figures. I have watched farmers in their milking parlors being as meticu- lous as scientists. They are all ' aware that it does not take much to taint a milk shipment. They are also aware of the dam- age milk can do to soils and streams and this idea of taking off the first rinse would be just an- other step in preventing any more phosphorous from getting into the water system. Government gives new name to laboratory TORONTO - As of September 3, 1991, the Quality and Standards Di- vision of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food will be locat- ed in Guelph and will be renamed Laboratory and Inspection Services Division. "The move of the division is part of the consolidation of ministry of- fices in Guelph and the new name will better reflect services it pro- vides," said Minister of Agriculture and Food Elmer Buchanan. The Laboratory and Inspection Services Division ensures the wholesomeness of food products through regular inspections and la- boratory testing programs. It also provides animal diagnostic services maintains quality assurance through enforcement of grade stan- dards and protects producers through financial protection pro- grams. It is comprised of five branches and two units, including: agricultu- ral and food laboratory services, veterinary laboratory services, dairy inspection, livestock inspec- tion, plant products inspection, fi- nancial protection unit and investi- gative unit. All of the branches and units will be located in the same premises. Protect your investment DAVE'S CAR OILING ... we use hot, acid free, new oil CARS AND LIGHT TRUCKS Drummond St. E., Blyth 523-4343 OPEN DAILY (Weather permitting) We're Fully Equipped for Any Job Our Met of trucks. CUSTOM CRUSHING AND SCREENING OF GRAVEL • Supplying you with various aggregate materials in gravel and atone. Crusher °miffing .t our pit. We have the capacity to meet your nsede to gray& and atone. • Our crtav vstone UMW operating .t our pH. Our OWN of •.o vdore . le.d.rs • Widows. •TRUCKING *GRAVEL, SAND & STONE *BULLDOZING *EXCAVATING *TOPSOIL *SEPTIC SYSTEMS Job too big ot too smog" R.R. 3 Clinton OFFICE Res. dt SHOP... • 482-9212 4 erner CONTRACTING LTD. rFARM UPDATF Guelph research identifies swine mutation GUELPH - A mutation associat- ed with malignant hyperthermia in swine - a disease that costs the pork industry an estimated $1 billion a year worldwide - has been identi- fied. The international race to identify the mutation was won by Universi- ty of Guelph professor Peter O'Brien (with the clinical pathology section at Guelph's Ontario Veten- nary College) and University of To- ronto professor David MacLennan. The mutation was identified in Ma- cLennan's laboratory by sequencing the gene in normal and abnormal swine from the University of Guelph. A 100 -percent correlation was found between DNA-baspd tests from MacLennan's lab and physiological/biochemical tests used in O'Brien's research laborato- ries for diagnosing the condition. From these findings, the scien- tists developed a blood test using modern molecular biological tech- niques to identify the mutation in individual swine. Their findings were published last week in the pre- stigious American journal Science. Malignant hyperthermia (MH) disease is fatal in no more than one percent of swine, but its most detri- mental effect is poor -quality pork. Major financial losses occur from what is known as PSE - pale, Soft, exudative (watery) meat - in affect- ed animals. Although the affected meat is edible, producers lose from 2.5 to 10 percent of pork weight from shrinkage and water loss. The meat continues to. lose moisture in cooking. In Canada, loss estimates range from $30 million to $100 million a year, says O'Brien. He believes that at feast one percent of pork is lost in Canada because of the disease. The real impact of MH on retail sales in unknown. North American markets are apparently more toler- ant of PSE meat than those in Eu- rope or Japan, where up to one- third of all Canadian pork exports are excluded because of PSE. O'Brien predic "kat MH could be eradicated in swine in one to two years. But it nay be advanta- geous to keep the mutation in a controlled herd situation, he says, because the gene is associated with increased mus: ling and leanness in pork. He and MacLennan are doing further research to determine the degree of correlation of the muta- tion with carcass quality and live performance characteristics. They are currently conducting studies on the optimum application of the test. There is no concrete data on the disease's frequency in swine, says O'Brien, but up to 20 percent of swine are affected. The disease is more prevalent in Europe than in North America, although its inci- dence has declined in the last dec- ade through selective breeding. Identified in the late 1800s, the dis- ease reached almost epidemic lev- els between the 1940s and '60s, when emphasis was placed on lean pork. MacLennan and O'Brien have ap- plied for a patent with the British Patent Office and are looking at selling rights on the test to commer- cial outlets. O'Brien expects the test will be administered through nu- merous laboratories because of the high number of swine affected. 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