SW New Mexico News

A Clovis dairy farmer whose product is vulnerable to contamination from a chemical group that can have ill effects on reproductive and developmental systems has learned that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has no appropriate regulations in place.

HuffPost reported in 2018 that Art Schaap received a letter from Cannon Air Force Base that claimed his well water was contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) after the chemicals had migrated into his farm's groundwater due to firefighting exercises on the neighboring base. The letter ordered Schaap and his family to stop drinking the water, but Schaap worried about his cows, noting that they were also drinking the polluted water.

The New Mexico Department of Agriculture tested Schaap's water and found it had levels 70 times above the health limit for PFAS. Schaap discovered that neither the agriculture department or the FDA had a protocol for testing milk, so a test was created for him, HuffPost reported. 

Subsequently, two other dairy farmers in Clovis also found their groundwater was contaminated.

HuffPost reports there is no enforceable regulatory level for PFAS in anything from water to food, and that the FDA, after testing several packaged foods and milk samples from Schaap's dairy farm, concluded that there was no indication of a health concern.

"Overall, our findings did not detect PFAS in the vast majority of the foods tested," The FDA stated. "The FDA does not have any indication that these substances are a human health concern, in other words, a food safety risk in human food, at the levels found in this limited sampling.”

Environmental scientists question that finding, with some saying that new findings on PFAS' health effects should be noted and that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) needs to update its 2016 advisory on PFAS.

Walter Bradley, a Dairy Farmers of America Representative, told HuffPost that the groundwater contamination is concerning.

"It's getting into the food chain," Bradley said during a legislative committee hearing in November. "And if you let it get into the food chain, you've got a major issue."