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