David Hare-Scott wrote:
songbird wrote:
David Hare-Scott wrote:
...
In my view whatever organic matter you can get locally and cheaply
(or free) is always superior to what you may buy or truck in.
if it is clean, sure. however, i'm wary
of taking anything from a farm these days.
things aren't the way they used to be.
animals are moved around a lot more now and
there are more resistant diseases.
To all those who say that it is essential to compost manure before
use, I ask why?
ever hear of E.coli O157:H7 ?
No but I am sure it's nasty
for children and elderly there is 6%
chance of kidney failure if infected. for
the rest of us it can mean bloody poo,
vomiting and other fun stuff.
this bacteria can be found in even healthy
animals with no obvious sign it is there short
of testing each pile of poo. it can take as
little as 100 bacteria to cause an infection
(in my opinion 1 is enough if you happen to
be really unlucky or are immunologically
under the weather).
Can you give me a reference for these statements?
aside from Billy's reference here is another i'm
wading through now:
_Microbiology, Principles and Explorations_ by
Jacquelyn Black, 5th ed, C 2002.
-----begin quote typoes my fault-----
[i sure wish Billy would delimit his quotes
similarly so i could figure out where the
quotes start and stop
]
p. 623-624
"Enterohemorragic strains of E.coli O157:H7 have
caused deadly outbreaks... It began with 2 outbreaks
in 1982, traced back to undercooked hamburbers in
fast-food chain restarants. Out of 732 cases, in
four Western U.S. states four children died. In
Japan in 1996, more than 6000 school children were
afffected. In the UK it is more likely to be acquired
from lamb than beef. The CDC now requires reporting
all cases. Because many cases are never diagnosed
statistics are uncertain, but it is estimated that
21,000 infections per year occur in the U.S, with about
250 deaths. Its prevalence in Europe, Asia, Africa.
and South America is unknown, but it is commonly
reported from Canada.
E.coli H... is found in a small number of healthy
cattle's intestines, where it is then passed out in
the manure. Meat is not the only product that can
be contaminated, apples picked up from manure-laden
soil underneath apple trees were pressed into a lethal
apple juice...
....Only about 100 cells are needed to start an
infection,..."
-----endquote-----
i tried to get the current infection rates
(as this reference is over 10yrs old) from the
CDC the other night, but my connection is slow
and it barfed before i could get the pdf
to download. i'd be interested to see it
sometime, i doubt it is fewer, but we'll see.
and then there are the flesh eating staph
bacterias going around now too. a friend
lost his foot and it's very likely it came
from horse manure.
How would you know that?
he works closely with a lot of stressed
and abused horses from many places so
he has new animals coming through at times.
many of these animals are sick and treated
with antibiotics.
i'm sticking to green manures and worm
composting of green manures, that's about all
the risk i want to take.
There are some very nasty bugs around: what chance they are found in
manure, what chance you catch them from it (assuming you are not eating the
stuff) and will composting kill every one?
no, composting will not kill every one,
but it reduces the bad guys and increases the
competitor bacterial population and fungi so
that at least is better than getting the
manure straight. but if you use a shovel to
move the poo and then don't disinfect the
shovel and then use that same shovel to
turn a veggie patch then you've just
spread the bacteria accidentally. luckily
most of them are killed off in one way or
another, but hit your shin with that same
shovel and break the skin and...
Once you discount the yuck
factor what is the real risk?
if you eat meat in the USoA you're likely
getting some exposures to many various bacteria
that haven't been caught (or are caught too
late) or reported. the regulations in this
country are pretty weak and the processing
is fast and furious.
we recieved a phone call for one meat recall
(the company had our phone number and the barcode
of the item). by sheer luck we had put that meat
in the freezer and so Ma had to go out and buy
10lbs unfrozen to use for some immediate cooking
for (counting roughly) 50 possible people. how
many people used the recalled meat right away and
how many infections could they have caused?
hundreds or thousands as it is a meat source for
many businesses.
I don't know the answer to any of those
questions. I have been handling horse for years and never got poisoning.
you live in a different country and handle
your own horses. this is much different than
how a lot of manures and animals are treated
here. there's a lot of movement of animals
and it's easy for one infected animal to
contaminate a transport vehicle, shute, holding
area, barn, manure lagoon, stream, well, ...
once that's done it's very hard to get rid of.
You can get some terrible bugs from supermarket lettuce, it seems to happen
in the USA every other week.
yes, and most of those bugs are from
manures.
We live in a soup of gazillions of microbes,
in our air, soil and water, and on our skin and every surface in our
dwellings. Life is a lottery that we all play.
yes, i agree with you in general. i cannot avoid
them, but i can learn about them and work with
them in various ways (eating good bacteria to
outcompete the bad guys, burying contaminated
items deeply, mulching to prevent splashing,
etc.).
the interesting thing about bacteria is that
besides being so many species (estimated currently
at over 5 million in some readings i've done) they
transfer genes around and it's not that uncommon
a thing at all. so the nasty bugs can transfer
those genes to bacteria that normally aren't
nasty. they suspect that is how E.coli O157:H7
got going (likely reinforced by antibiotic use
on feedlots). i don't know if they've looked
back further or not (for signs of it in frozen
blood samples from many years ago).
songbird