David Hare-Scott wrote:

This makes no sense to me at all. Cooked vegetables are no more health risk
than uncooked and will break down faster in the compost heap. I cannot see
any reason to not use it and so what if it has a dollop of salad dressing on
it. What is this concept of "break down cleanly into sweet compost"? It
sounds to me like this is just a squeemish reaction. A compost heap is a big
pile of stuff that is rancid, rotting, corrupted and not fit for human
consumption. We coopt a few zillion microorganisms to do our dirty work for
us. Why judge their working environment by whether you would like it.

You are the only one who said "health risk." I'm talking about fats
added to compost, and how fats don't break down as quickly as vegetable
matter and also go rancid. If you want to dump fats into your own
compost heap, go for it.

Perhaps you don't understand the concept of "sweet compost."



As for meat, fat etc I can see that there could well be problems, especially
in suburban setting, with smell and scavengers. However if your situation is
such that these matters can be dealt with I see no reason why you cannot
compost such items. Hair, household dust (containing hair and skin) and
feathers are grist for the mill so why not a bit more protein from flesh.

The keratin of hair, skin and feathers is not comparable to striated
muscle fiber.



The
bacteria and fungi that do the work will consume the material. I would keep
to the idea of a balanced mix however, just as you wouldn't make a heap out of
50% chook manure you wouldn't go out and empty 5 gallons of cooking oil into
it either.

The problem of animal visitation really
hadn't occurred to me, as they will raid any garbage pile if they're
hungry enough.

As it happens I don't put fat and meat scraps in my heap (ia have an alternate
recycler for that). That doesn't stop the mice from living in my all vege
heap.

Thus, as I stated and as you included in the quotation, animals will
raid any garbage pile if they are hungry enough.