HARTLAND, MI — Officials warn that beef from a southeast Michigan cattle farm contains unsafe levels of toxic PFAS chemicals traced to the application of wastewater biosolids as fertilizer on fields used to grow feed crops.
On Friday, Jan. 28, the Michigan health and agriculture departments issued a joint consumption advisory for beef from the Grostic Cattle Co., a century-old family farm near Hartland that sells directly to consumers and at farmers markets.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) believes that test samples indicated prolonged consumption of meat from the Grostic farm could pose a health risk, although the detected contaminant levels do not meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) internal criteria for issuing a product recall.
Roasts and steaks from the farm tested between .98 and 2.48 parts-per-billion (ppb) for the individual compound PFOS, according to officials with Michigan PFAS Action Response Team (MPART). The samples were obtained in December and lab results came back this month.
There are currently no state or federal standards related to PFOS exposure in beef, although there have been high-profile examples of cattle contamination from PFAS in New Mexico and Maine. The USDA did not immediately respond to an inquiry on Friday. The advisory is out of an “abundance of caution,” according to MPART.
The situation is Michigan’s first known example of PFAS contamination in beef. The farmer, Jason Grostic, is being offered financial assistance to offset the impact on the farm’s business and customer notification has begun, said officials.
Officials say the 300-acre farm features about 120 cows.
Customers may have bought beef directly from the farm, at the Hartland Farmers Market or from a trailer in the Rural King store parking lot in Hartland. The beef was sold to some local schools, which have been notified and stopped using it.
The Livingston County Educational Service Agency said Friday that 30-pounds of Grostic beef was used to make chili for pre-school children on three separate days late last year.
State officials “have assured us that there is no risk to the children enrolled in either program as the frequency and amount of beef used in our lunch program are limited,” the agency said.
The Grostic farm received biosolid sludges from 2010 to 2015 from the Wixom municipal wastewater treatment plant, according to MPART. In 2018, the plant was revealed to be a pass-through source of PFAS chemicals from a local auto supplier that were entering the Huron River.
The chemicals were traced back to Tribar Manufacturing, a chrome plater that makes automotive parts and sends its effluent to the Wixom sewage plant. The contaminants have become a reoccurring problem in the city of Ann Arbor’s drinking water supply, which must filter its river-sourced water through activated carbon to remove them.
A “Do Not Eat” fish consumption advisory issued in 2018 remains in place for the Huron River downstream of the Wixom sewage plant discharge.
The state began studying PFAS in wastewater biosolids in 2018 following the Wixom discovery. In 2021, Michigan began prohibiting land application of “industrially impacted” biosolids containing more than 150-ppb of PFOS and now requires testing of biosolids before they can be applied to farm fields, where they’re commonly used to add nutrients to soil.
Groundwater monitoring turned up elevated PFAS levels at the Grostic farm last year. Environmental regulators said the farm’s reliance on its own crops for cattle feed resulted in the chemicals bioaccumulating in the cattle. The farm received the largest and most frequent applications of contaminated biosolids from the Wixom plant.
“We think this is a pretty unique situation,” said Abby Hendershott, director of MPART, a special team within the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) that investigates PFAS contamination around the state.
“There are other fields that have impacts as well, but a farm where you’re actually having a farmer grow his own crops to feed to his own cattle on biosolid fields; we think this is a unique farming operation that unfortunately was caught up in this,” she said.
Friday’s advisory announcement was initially made by MPART, which posted a lengthy article online several hours prior to publication of the joint DHHS and Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) advisory.
According to the ATSDR, research involving humans suggests high exposure to PFAS may lead to increase cholesterol levels, changes in liver enzymes, deceased vaccine response in children, increased risk of high blood pressure or pre-clampsia in pregnant women, decreases in infant birth weight and increased risk of kidney or testicular cancer.
Grostic declined to comment when reached by phone Friday.
“I don’t even know where to start,” he said. “This was all landed in my lap less than 24 hours ago.”
Stephanie Kammer, an environmental quality analyst with the division at EGLE that oversees sewage discharges, said Grostic has been “very cooperative.”
“It’s a scary thing to have the state come in and do sampling,” Kammer said. “He allowed us access; was very, very cooperative. He allowed us to take soil samples, surface water samples and install monitoring wells on his field. So, it’s been a very good relationship.”
Tony Spaniola, a metro Detroit attorney and national PFAS activist, credited Grostic for his “courage and decency” in cooperating with EGLE and MPART. He said that many cattle farmers refused to cooperate with environmental and health regulators during Michigan’s infamous 1970s PBB contamination disaster.
“This guy just had more than the rug pulled out from underneath him,” Spaniola said. “I hope that everybody will support him and his family in any and all ways that they can.”
Michigan environmental activists reacted to the advisory by calling for the development of state and national regulatory standards for PFAS in soil, and reiterated concerns with crops grown on fields that received contaminated biosolids, calling it an “under-recognized” exposure pathway.
“We want to be clear that, so far, this is an isolated example of beef contamination,” said Charlotte Jameson, chief policy officer for the Michigan Environmental Council. “This contamination, however, makes clear that human exposure to PFAS from biosolids could be a significant pathway and we should therefore ban applying biosolids that contain PFAS to crops while we await further sampling and test results.”
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