Kuhn North America

Kuhn North America, Inc. is a manufacturer of agricultural and industrial equipment, specializing in spreaders, mixers, hay tools, and tillage tools. According to the company profile in BioCycle Magazine, a publication serving the interests of the sewage sludge industry, Kuhn's mixers "offer versatile solutions to the growing demand for mixing biosolids and organic compost, and spreaders for the land application of biosolids and composted materials."

Involvement with the Toxic Sludge Industry
By offering "versatile solutions to the growing demand for mixing biosolids and organic compost," Kuhn is participating in the Toxic sludge industry. "Biosolids" is the Orwellian PR euphemism for toxic sewage sludge. The reference to "organic compost" is also misleading. Sewage sludge cannot be certified organic, but hundreds of communities across the U.S. sell toxic sludge products that are typically renamed biosolids and sold or given away as "organic fertilizer" or "organic compost."

A list of just some of the hazardous chemicals and pathogens found in sludge can be found in the article Sludge contaminants. Sludge contaminants include Dioxins and Furans, Flame Retardants, Metals, Organochlorine Pesticides, 1,2-Dibromo-3-Chloropropane (DBCP), Naphthalene, Triclosan, Nonylphenols, Phthalates, Nanosilver, and thousands more substances. "Sewage is the mix of water and whatever wastes from domestic and industrial life are flushed into the sewer. ... We must note that, though the aim of sewage treatment is to produce clean water, it is never to produce 'clean' sludge.  Indeed, the 'dirtier' the sludge - the more complete its concentration of the noxious wastes - the more the treatment has done its job. ... very waste produced in our society that can be got rid of down toilets and drains and that can also be got out of the sewage by a given treatment process will be in the sludge.  Sludge is thus inevitably a noxious brew of vastly various and incompatible materials unpredictable in themselves and in the toxicity of their amalgamation, incalculably but certainly wildly dangerous to life."

Disposing of Sludge by Spreading it on Agricultural Land
By selling "spreaders for the land application of biosolids," Kuhn is participating in the sludging of fields used for growing food. According to the Center for Media and Democracy's Food Rights Network, food should not be grown in "biosolids." See the Toxic Sludge Portal for more.

According to Sludge News, "[t]he policy of disposing of sludge by spreading it on agricultural land - a policy given the benign term 'land application' - has its inception in the Ocean Dumping ban of 1987. Before 1992, when the law went into effect, the practice had been, after extracting the sludge from the wastewater, to load it on barges and dump it 12, and later 106 miles off shore into the ocean. But many people who cared about life in the ocean knew that, wherever it was dumped, the sludge was causing vast dead moon-scapes on the ocean floor.  New EPA regulations for 'land application' were promulgated in 1993. With the aid of heating and pelletizing and some slippery name morphs along the way, EPA claimed sludge could be transmogrified into 'compost' ...  .  But the land “application” of sewage sludge ...  will pollute the whole chain of life for which soil is the base."

Exhibitor at the 2011 BioCycle 11th Annual Conference on "Renewable Energy from Organics Recycling"
Kuhn North America was an exhibitor at the 2011 BioCycle 11th Annual Conference on "Renewable Energy from Organics Recycling." BioCycle Magazine is a publication serving the interests of the sewage sludge industry.

Contacts
1501 West Seventh Avenue P.O. Box 167 Brodhead, WI 53520 USA Phone: (608) 897-2131 Fax: (608) 897-2561 Web: www.KuhnNorthAmerica.com

Other SourceWatch Resources

 * Toxic sludge
 * Toxic Sludge Portal
 * Sludge contaminants
 * Sewage sludge