Articles by Clay Detlefsen
Dairy processors are using water more efficiently. That’s a good thing because the costs of this resource (incoming and discharging) will only continue to increase.
April 22, 2013
Water is essential to life. Approximately 70% of the human body is made up of water and about 75% of our planet is covered in water. With that much water in and around us it would seem that water would be cheap and abundant. But that isn’t always the case.
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Food defense is way beyond food safety. Search the FDA’s mitigation strategies database for ideas how to improve security around a blend tank, pasteurizer or other equipment.
April 17, 2013
For the last 10 years, I have been working closely with federal and state government officials on the prevention of intentional contamination of food, or what is known in our government as food defense.
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Mick Jagger told us in song that we can’t always get what we want. But milk jugs and milk crates give us what want and need from a sustainability point of view.
January 17, 2013
Consumers want sustainable food packaging. Food manufacturers want to use sustainable packaging. Many packaging suppliers are striving to meet marketplace demands. But we live in an imperfect world and we can’t always get what we want. That said improvements are being made and have been made over the years.
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Measuring sustainability practices involves many variables. There is no one-size-fits-all approach that works for all operations. Metrics take differences into consideration.
December 18, 2012
Consumers continue to demand tasty and nutritious products that are produced in an environmentally responsible way. As a result, retailers and foodservice companies have heightened interest in the sustainability of their suppliers, and environmental organizations have ratcheted up their sustainability assessments of industries and businesses.
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In New York state, two dairy processing plants that turn waste into energy (biogas), have created enough renewable energy to heat about 2,600 typical homes in the Northeast for one year.
August 17, 2012
Communities, industries, businesses and consumers are seeking options to incorporate renewable energy for many reasons, whether it is to offset the rising cost of fossil fuels, to be energy independent or to reduce the strain of a growing population depleting finite resources.
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The best fluid-milk plants use about one-half gallon of water per gallon of milk processed. The least efficient plants use four times that amount.
April 10, 2012
I have been at the International Dairy Foods Association for 22 years, and during that time water usage and wastewater discharges have always been important issues.Discussions about water in the past were usually about wastewater. Historically, municipalities added more and more houses and businesses to their sewage treatment plants, but did not upgrade the infrastructure to accommodate the increased load.
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January 13, 2012
It is time to talk about best practices for the dairy processing industry. But I am not an engineer and I can’t get too technical, like recommending that you lower your refrigeration system’s minimum head pressure set point or telling you that you should lower your boiler steam generation pressure to match your process requirements.
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December 7, 2011
The U.S. dairy industry has been diligently gathering data, crunching numbers and double-checking methodologies to ensure that the carbon footprint and life-cycle assessments for fluid milk and cheese are consistent with internationally accepted schemes and protocols. Since we are pretty much done with those, now what?
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