Reykjavík Grapevine - 19.06.2015, Blaðsíða 6

Reykjavík Grapevine - 19.06.2015, Blaðsíða 6
6 The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 1 — 20116 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 8 — 2015 Special Report | Skyr But both have a sour side imbued more deeply than their tangy flavors, a by- product of their creation that, if sim- ply tossed away in great proportion, can cause serious ecological damage. As skyr exported from Iceland pops up on store shelves in more countries, Icelandic manufacturers are expand- ing production to meet demand. Like the texture of the skyr itself, the plot thickens. Acid whey: a great band name and more In 2013, the US magazine Modern Farmer published a story by reporter Justin Elliott titled, “Whey Too Much: Greek Yoghurt’s Dark Side.” It was an investigation, widely shared, regard- ing the disposal of acid whey in the US, a byproduct of “filtered yoghurts.” Acid whey is a seemingly innocu- ous, watery liquid that accumulates when you keep filtering liquids from solids to produce your Greek yoghurt or your skyr. To make skyr, skim milk is fermented with specific bacteria and turned to curd. Then, the curd is ultra-filtered—mechanically, at major production facilities—until most of the liquid is gone and you have a thick, smooth skyr. One liter of skim milk will create 300 grams of skyr (about two single-serving containers) and 700 ml of acid whey. The acid whey is 93-95% water, and the other 5-7% is lactose and mi- cronutrients. The micronutrients include minor levels of proteins, cal- cium, phosphorus, magnesium and potassium. Of all of these, the micro- nutrient that should stick out to you is phosphorous, because an excess of it can be damaging to marine habitats and water supply. During the summer of 2007, a spill of about 30,000 gallons of whey from a dairy processing plant in the US state of Wisconsin caused a mass fish kill on the Milwaukee River and one of its tributaries. Whether this whey was sweet whey, a byproduct of cheese production, or acid whey, of filtered yoghurts, is unmentioned but the two are very closely related, with sweet whey containing more protein. And while acidity doesn’t always correlate with toxicity, in the case of acid whey the pH level—a scale used to measure acidity—is equal to that of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) highest pH level for acid rain in the U.S. For these reasons, it is illegal to dump acid whey in the US. But in Ice- land, there aren’t laws written spe- cifically about acid whey disposal, and protections haven’t kept up with the expanded production. By 2011, skyr exports from Iceland had increased by 160 percent and sales of skyr in Scan- dinavia in the last four years have gone up tenfold. Not only is Iceland produc- ing more skyr than ever, the country’s manufacturers are producing more acid whey than ever, and handling its disposal is a growing concern. Too much phosphorous is bad for us According to Þórir Hrafnsson, a press and information officer at the Min- istry of Industries and Innovations, the law aimed at protecting Iceland’s environment from acid whey disposal is the Regulation on Sewers and Sew- age, which requires pH neutralization before anything acidic is released into sewage. But this is not always fol- lowed, and does not account for the phosphorous pollution. Though phosphorus is a natural part of aquatic ecosystems, too much of it can be damaging. Large-scale con- tamination can decrease the oxygen in a body of water, killing marine life and allowing algae and bacteria to prolifer- ate. In Iceland there are three dairy manufacturers that produce skyr. Biobú and Mjólka, of Mosfellsbær and Hafnarfjörður respectively, claim about four percent of the domestic market and don’t export. All of Mjólka’s acid whey is pack- aged and sold as Mysa according to Ólafur Ragnarsson, Production Man- ager at Mjólka. Mysa has been used for centuries by Icelanders to pickle and sour meats and vegetables, and even as a drink. At Biobú, where the yoghurt is certified organic, Managing Director Elki Gunnarsson says they bottle and sell some of the acid whey produced from their skyr, but that supply exceeds demand. “Skyr is a very small part of our pro- duction, so we don’t have a lot of it [acid whey] going to the drain. But yes, we throw some down the drain,” he says. They don’t currently neutralize the acid whey that is dumped, against Ice- landic law, but he says the company is working toward solu- tions. “We are collaborat- ing with other com- panies to use more of the whey so we don’t throw it away. The goal is to not throw any away.” The other 96% of the domestic market belongs to the only company exporting skyr, MS. MS produces about 2,500 tonnes of skyr each year, and ex- ports about 380 tonnes of that according to Jón Axel Pétursson, managing director of the sale and marketing division at MS. They are hoping to ex- port closer to 600 tonnes of skyr during the next few years. Björn Gunnarson, a product devel- oper at MS, explains that “in the past, the [acid] whey was equally important as the skyr.” He said for a long time it was “the soft drink of an era.” But like Biobú, MS can’t find a large enough domestic mar- ket for the acid whey they produce. MS does almost all of its production in Selfoss, but does some small-scale production in Akureyri as well. Accord- ing to Marjaana Hovi, Quality Manager at MS, the acid whey is collected af- ter filtering and put into a tank for 24 hours, where oxygen is added to help the organic particles degrade. After 24 hours, the pH is brought up to about 5, meaning the acidity of the whey is on par with that of black coffee. Then, from the factory in Selfoss, it is dumped into the glacial river Ölfusá, the largest river in Iceland and an im- portant part of the country’s salmon industry, and carried for 25 kilometers into the Atlantic Ocean. Skyr clear of the river This is problematic on a few levels. The Icelandic Regulation on Sewers and Sewage requires substances be neutral before release. A pH of 5 is not entirely neutral—pure water has a pH of 7. According to the EPA, most aquat- ic animals prefer a pH of 6.5-8.0 and anything outside this range “reduces the diversity in the stream because it stresses the physiological systems of most organisms and can reduce re- production.” What remains to be ad- equately studied is if MS’s large-scale dumping of acid whey could affect the pH of that final stretch of Ölfusá before it reaches the sea. The second is the release of phos- phorous into a fish community, and the impact of mi- cronutrients that don’t naturally ex- ist there. According to Marjaana, MS isn’t worried about the dumping because of the temperature of the water and the size of it. Likewise, Þórir from the Ministry of Industries and Innovations wrote in an email that “the dilution is tremendous.” But Karen Smith, a Dairy Process- ing Technologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Dairy Research, suggests that this might be shortsighted. “You always have to be careful when you’re dumping something that’s not the same composition as water, into the water,” she said. She and other scientists at the Center for Dairy Re- search are working on ways to repur- pose acid whey from Greek yoghurt production, including using it in fertil- izers, because of the phosphorous, and isolating the micronutrients to be used in other products. When you're dumping acid whey into a water system, she said, “you’re adding certain minerals to something that doesn’t naturally contain them.” MS has licensing arrangements with several skyr manufacturers in other Scandinavian countries, including Denmark and Norway. In Denmark the company Thise Mejeri puts their acid whey in pig feed. In Norway, skyr is produced by Q-Meieriene, and the company has a special license from the Norwegian government to dump their acid whey into their local sewage system. Research and Development Director Arne Bernt Dahle says they regulate the organic particles, tem- perature and pH. “We are constantly looking for better solutions,” he wrote, “but so far we have not found such.” If we can’t dump it, maybe we can drink it? Tristan Zuber, a Dairy Foods Special- ist at Cornell University in New York, wrote in an email that the US cheese industry in the 1970s faced a similar is- sue with disposing of the whey created by cheese production. “[C]heese whey is slightly differ- ent than Strained Greek yoghurt whey because it is less acidic and contains protein,” she wrote. “Cheese manufac- turers have found extremely unique uses for cheese whey that they have implemented […] and now have high- er margins on whey than they do the cheese! We foresee this as a possibility in yoghurt whey.” But acid whey doesn’t contain high levels of protein—most has been kept in the yoghurt—so its redeeming quali- ties lay in the lactose and micronutri- ents. For this, the scientists at Cornell are looking at a number of options, including adding more nutrients to the acid whey and selling it as a sports drink, and making biogas via methane released when converting the lactose, which can then be converted into electricity. At MS, they are also con- sidering turning their acid whey into a marketable drink, promoted for its micronutrients. Still, as in Iceland, Greek yoghurt manufacturers in the US are produc- ing too much acid whey. So much so that many are paying farmers to take it off their hands, according to the Mod- ern Farmer article. In Iceland, the cost of this skyr byproduct continues to be born by wastewater and the Ölfusá River until the nation’s manufactur- ers can find a better way to handle acid whey. Icelandic and Greek style yoghurts (or cheese, in the case of skyr. Yes, skyr is technically a soft cheese, though it is widely branded and eaten as a yoghurt) are among the hippest on the international dairy scene, where popular- ity is proportional to protein content. Words by Alex Baumhardt Photos by Hörður Sveinsson Handling Acid Whey The Wrong Way Harmful byproduct of Icelandic skyr production reaching the country’s largest river When you're dump- ing acid whey into a water system, she said, “you’re adding certain minerals to something that doesn’t naturally con- tain them.” REPORT
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