I read the article, and saw something completely different. Whey is a potentially valuable byproduct, too nutritious to just throw away and they can't do it legally anyway. So these were some of the ways that the whey was being used. The food industry looking for ways to use the byproducts of an industrial process isn't exactly new, but it's also not something outside the industry thinks about.

Modern Farmer is doing some interesting work in the intersection between farming and how we're re-conceptualizing food in the last decade.