From MAILER-DAEMON Tue Nov 2 00:34:40 1999 Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 00:34:40 -0500 (EST) From: Mail System Internal Data Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA X-IMAP: 0941520829 0000000001 Status: RO This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is not a real message. It is created automatically by the mail system software. If deleted, important folder data will be lost, and it will be re-created with the data reset to initial values. From london@metalab.unc.edu Mon Aug 30 17:31:30 1999 -0500 Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA09706 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 17:31:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id QAA10014 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 16:37:12 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from mds03.prontomail.com (mds03.prontomail.com [209.185.149.93]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA09981 for ; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 16:37:06 -0400 (EDT) Received: from peggy2 (209.185.149.226) by mds03.prontomail.com (NPlex 2.0.123) for sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu; Mon, 30 Aug 1999 13:31:35 -0700 From: "Peggy Adams" Message-Id: <199908301333031@peggy2.looksmart.com> Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 13:33:03 -0800 X-Priority: Normal Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Avery, manure and food safety X-Mailer: Web Based Pronto Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu id QAA09985 Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk Status: RO X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1 Sanet, It may turn out that Avery's worries about manure may be better directed at conventional farming. I just returned from a meeting with the mayor of a small rural Idaho town. He is negotiating with a local, conventional, large scale farmer to spray the town's liquid, uncomposted sewage sludge on land currently in CRS. He would like to get local farmers to spray it of field stubble, too. I have also read recently that large-scale potato growers in southern Idaho are experimenting with spraying uncomposted manure from local dairies and feed lots on commercial fields as a way to solve the disposal problems associated with CAFOs. It seems that as the problem of manure disposal becomes a larger issue for CAFOs conventional farmers, at least here in Idaho, are finding the use of manure increasingly attractive. Peggy Adams Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute Moscow, Idaho LookSmart … or keep looking. http://www.looksmart.com To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Mon Sep 20 04:29:58 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id EAA11586 for ; Mon, 20 Sep 1999 04:29:57 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id DAA19898 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Mon, 20 Sep 1999 03:54:10 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from mta3.snfc21.pbi.net (mta3.snfc21.pbi.net [206.13.28.141]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id DAA19826 for ; Mon, 20 Sep 1999 03:54:03 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [63.192.219.119] (adsl-63-192-219-119.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [63.192.219.119]) by mta3.snfc21.pbi.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA28975; Mon, 20 Sep 1999 00:52:53 -0700 (PDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: Date: Sun, 19 Sep 1999 17:38:03 -0700 To: SANET-mg From: Misha Subject: CDC: foodborne disease estimates Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk Howdy, all-- In our ongoing thread on organic food and foodborne diseases (FBDs), thought you might like to see last week's CDC press release on the topic, via ProMED. Note this paragraph, which appears as the next-to-the-last one: "Although the U.S. food supply is among the safest in the world, the nation increasingly faces new food safety challenges. Novel pathogens are emerging, and familiar ones are growing resistant to treatment. Since 1942, the number of known food-borne pathogens has increased more than five-fold. American consumers eat out more and cook for themselves less. They also eat more processed food than ever before, involving more people and more preparation, thus increasing the chance for disease-producing food-handling errors. In addition, the number of people most vulnerable to food-borne disease continues to grow: baby boomers are aging thus increasing their vulnerability to food-borne illness." Novel pathogens and treatment resistance are matters of the industrial/ "managed-care" health and the industrial food systems' putting unusual selection pressures on microbes, encouraging the evolution of resistant strains. (I've got another item for you all in the works on that topic, going back to Russ Bulluck's thoughts on soil-borne enteric bacteria.) Increasing consumption of value-added food and food-handling problems in that sector are features of the industrial food system. And it's a demographic reality that all people are aging and living longer. Not, might I note, just "baby boomers." Last I checked, the people now alive in their 80s, who are among the most vulnerable to /E. coli/, /Salmonella/, and other FBDs are Depression-era people. In addition, I don't know what proportion of organic food is sold directly to consumers or to retail outlets, for home preparation. But I'm willing to bet that it's a much higher proportion than industrial food. I base that on CIAS's work in the past 5 years on the institutional buying of local and organic food--not many institutions and restaurants source their food from organic farms/growers. And the key to preventing foodborne illness lies, as it always has, in proper preparation: cleanliness in handling, appropriate cooking of meats and eggs, etc. That's a lot harder to get hold of in an industrialized food system than a more democratized one. Here's the full release: FOODBORNE DISEASE ESTIMATES, CDC, PULSENET - USA ************************************************* A ProMED post Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 23:37:09 -0400 From: Thomas James Allen Source: CDC press release, 16 Sep 1999 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released today the most complete estimate to date on the incidence of food-borne disease in the United States. According to data published in the current issue of CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases, CDC's peer-reviewed journal that tracks new and reemerging infectious diseases worldwide, diseases caused by food may cause an estimated 325 000 serious illnesses resulting in hospitalizations, 76 million cases of gastrointestinal illnesses, and 5000 deaths each year. "While the U.S. food supply remains one of the safest in the world, these new findings further support what we have said all along: the public health burden of food-borne disease is substantial," said HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala. "Our investments in better tracking and surveillance systems have resulted in more complete data to help us evaluate ongoing and future food safety efforts. I urge Congress to help us continue to build upon our food safety programs -- we need to maintain our aggressive efforts on food safety, and we need to fully fund the President's food safety initiative." The data being released today come from a variety of sources including new and existing surveillance systems, death certificates and published studies from academic institutions. According to CDC Director Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, these are the most complete estimates ever calculated and should not be compared to previous estimates since the estimates are a result of better information and new analyses rather than changes in disease frequency over time. These new estimates provide a snapshot of the problem and do not measure trends and do not indicate that the problem is getting better or worse. In addition, these new estimates include some diseases, such as those caused by _E. coli_ O157:H7 and Norwalk-like viruses, that were not included in some previous estimates, he noted. "Accurate estimates of disease burden are the foundation of sound public health policy," Dr. Koplan said. "We're extremely pleased to have a new baseline to measure our future efforts to improve food safety. Updated estimates of food-borne illness are needed to guide new prevention efforts and assess the effectiveness of food safety measures." These measures used 1997 as a baseline --- before key food safety programs were implemented. Although the U.S. food supply is among the safest in the world, the nation increasingly faces new food safety challenges. Novel pathogens are emerging, and familiar ones are growing resistant to treatment. Since 1942, the number of known food-borne pathogens has increased more than five-fold. American consumers eat out more and cook for themselves less. They also eat more processed food than ever before, involving more people and more preparation, thus increasing the chance for disease-producing food-handling errors. In addition, the number of people most vulnerable to food-borne disease continues to grow: baby boomers are aging thus increasing their vulnerability to food-borne illness. Since 1993, the Clinton Administration significantly has expanded food safety programs, increasing consumer protections to ensure that the U.S. food supply remains one of the safest in the world. Some improvements include: new safety standards for meat, poultry and seafood products, better surveillance for food-borne diseases through FoodNet, and a new Early Warning System implemented to improve our detection of outbreaks. In 1998, CDC launched a collaborative interagency initiative called PulseNet that uses DNA fingerprinting to better detect food-borne illness. Today, any one of the more than 35 laboratories in CDC's PulseNet network can fingerprint _E. coli_ in less than 24 hours whereas the process used to take days or weeks. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Add this to your Debunking Dennis files. peace misha ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Michele Gale-Sinex Communications manager Center for Integrated Ag Systems, UW-Madison http://www.wisc.edu UW voice mail: 608-262-8018 Home office: 415-504-6474 (504-MISH) Home office fax: Same as above, phone first for enabling ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I eat everything. If anything is there, I eat it. I presume it is safe and good. --U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Mon Sep 20 06:14:54 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id GAA12151 for ; Mon, 20 Sep 1999 06:14:54 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id FAA03545 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Mon, 20 Sep 1999 05:09:07 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from sscntex.ssc.msu.edu (ssc.msu.edu [35.8.70.66]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id FAA03536 for ; Mon, 20 Sep 1999 05:09:01 -0400 (EDT) Received: by SSCNTEX with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2448.0) id ; Mon, 20 Sep 1999 05:00:38 -0400 Message-ID: From: "Harris, Craig" To: SANET-mg , "'Misha'" Subject: RE: foodborne disease estimates Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 05:00:37 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2448.0) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk while in general i agree with misha's overview of the cdc press release, i would pick up on a couple points . . . first, the elderly . . . the cdc said: the number of people most vulnerable to food-borne disease continues to grow: baby boomers are aging thus increasing their vulnerability to food-borne illness . . . normally the way one would pursue this line of inquiry is to look at age-specific rates of food-borne disease . . . the 'elderly hypothesis' would lead one to expect that rates among older persons are rising faster than rates for younger age groups, and/or that the number of cases among older persons is rising faster than numbers for younger age groups . . . whle these may be going on, i have not seen any analysis that actually shows that it is happening second, democratization . . . the key to preventing foodborne illness lies, as it always has, in proper preparation: cleanliness in handling, appropriate cooking of meats and eggs, etc. That's a lot harder to get hold of in an industrialized food system than a more democratized one . . . while i'm all for democratization, i'm not sure that proper preparation is easier to get hold of in a democratized systrem . . . while presumably the motivation is in the right place, educating hundreds of millions of food preparers is an enormous burden, especially if the foodborne disease situation itself is continually changing so that education has to be continuing . . . again, i'm not arguing for an industrialized food system; i am arguing that food safety is not necessarily easier in a democratized system cheers, craig craig k harris department of sociology michigan state university 429b berkey hall east lansing michigan 48824-1111 tel: 517-355-5048 fax: 517-432-2856 > ---------- > From: Misha[SMTP:mgs23@pacbell.net] > Sent: Sunday 19 September 1999 8:38 PM > To: SANET-mg > Subject: CDC: foodborne disease estimates > > Howdy, all-- > > In our ongoing thread on organic food and foodborne diseases (FBDs), > thought you might like to see last week's CDC press release on the > topic, via ProMED. > > Note this paragraph, which appears as the next-to-the-last one: > > "Although the U.S. food supply is among the safest in the world, the > nation > increasingly faces new food safety challenges. Novel pathogens are > emerging, and familiar ones are growing resistant to treatment. Since > 1942, > the number of known food-borne pathogens has increased more than > five-fold. > American consumers eat out more and cook for themselves less. They also > eat > more processed food than ever before, involving more people and more > preparation, thus increasing the chance for disease-producing > food-handling > errors. In addition, the number of people most vulnerable to food-borne > disease continues to grow: baby boomers are aging thus increasing their > vulnerability to food-borne illness." > > Novel pathogens and treatment resistance are matters of the > industrial/ "managed-care" health and the industrial food systems' > putting unusual selection pressures on microbes, encouraging the > evolution of resistant strains. (I've got another item for you all in > the works on that topic, going back to Russ Bulluck's thoughts on > soil-borne enteric bacteria.) > > Increasing consumption of value-added food and food-handling problems > in that sector are features of the industrial food system. > > And it's a demographic reality that all people are aging and living > longer. Not, might I note, just "baby boomers." Last I checked, the > people now alive in their 80s, who are among the most vulnerable to > /E. coli/, /Salmonella/, and other FBDs are Depression-era people. > > In addition, I don't know what proportion of organic food is sold > directly to consumers or to retail outlets, for home preparation. But > I'm willing to bet that it's a much higher proportion than industrial > food. I base that on CIAS's work in the past 5 years on the > institutional buying of local and organic food--not many institutions > and restaurants source their food from organic farms/growers. And the > key to preventing foodborne illness lies, as it always has, in proper > preparation: cleanliness in handling, appropriate cooking of meats > and eggs, etc. That's a lot harder to get hold of in an > industrialized food system than a more democratized one. > > Here's the full release: > > > FOODBORNE DISEASE ESTIMATES, CDC, PULSENET - USA > ************************************************* > A ProMED post > > Date: Thu, 16 Sep 1999 23:37:09 -0400 > From: Thomas James Allen > Source: CDC press release, 16 Sep 1999 > > > The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released today the > most complete estimate to date on the incidence of food-borne disease in > the United States. According to data published in the current issue of > CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases, CDC's peer-reviewed journal that > tracks > new and reemerging infectious diseases worldwide, diseases caused by food > may cause an estimated 325 000 serious illnesses resulting in > hospitalizations, 76 million cases of gastrointestinal illnesses, and 5000 > deaths each year. > > "While the U.S. food supply remains one of the safest in the world, these > new findings further support what we have said all along: the public > health > burden of food-borne disease is substantial," said HHS Secretary Donna E. > Shalala. "Our investments in better tracking and surveillance systems have > resulted in more complete data to help us evaluate ongoing and future food > safety efforts. I urge Congress to help us continue to build upon our food > safety programs -- we need to maintain our aggressive efforts on food > safety, and we need to fully fund the President's food safety initiative." > > The data being released today come from a variety of sources including new > and existing surveillance systems, death certificates and published > studies > from academic institutions. According to CDC Director Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, > these are the most complete estimates ever calculated and should not be > compared to previous estimates since the estimates are a result of better > information and new analyses rather than changes in disease frequency over > time. These new estimates provide a snapshot of the problem and do not > measure trends and do not indicate that the problem is getting better or > worse. In addition, these new estimates include some diseases, such as > those caused by _E. coli_ O157:H7 and Norwalk-like viruses, that were not > included in some previous estimates, he noted. > > "Accurate estimates of disease burden are the foundation of sound public > health policy," Dr. Koplan said. "We're extremely pleased to have a new > baseline to measure our future efforts to improve food safety. Updated > estimates of food-borne illness are needed to guide new prevention efforts > and assess the effectiveness of food safety measures." These measures used > 1997 as a baseline --- before key food safety programs were implemented. > > Although the U.S. food supply is among the safest in the world, the nation > increasingly faces new food safety challenges. Novel pathogens are > emerging, and familiar ones are growing resistant to treatment. Since > 1942, > the number of known food-borne pathogens has increased more than > five-fold. > American consumers eat out more and cook for themselves less. They also > eat > more processed food than ever before, involving more people and more > preparation, thus increasing the chance for disease-producing > food-handling > errors. In addition, the number of people most vulnerable to food-borne > disease continues to grow: baby boomers are aging thus increasing their > vulnerability to food-borne illness. > > Since 1993, the Clinton Administration significantly has expanded food > safety programs, increasing consumer protections to ensure that the U.S. > food supply remains one of the safest in the world. Some improvements > include: new safety standards for meat, poultry and seafood products, > better surveillance for food-borne diseases through FoodNet, and a new > Early Warning System implemented to improve our detection of outbreaks. In > 1998, CDC launched a collaborative interagency initiative called PulseNet > that uses DNA fingerprinting to better detect food-borne illness. Today, > any one of the more than 35 laboratories in CDC's PulseNet network can > fingerprint _E. coli_ in less than 24 hours whereas the process used to > take days or weeks. > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > Add this to your Debunking Dennis files. > > > peace > misha > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Michele Gale-Sinex > Communications manager > Center for Integrated Ag Systems, UW-Madison > http://www.wisc.edu > UW voice mail: 608-262-8018 > Home office: 415-504-6474 (504-MISH) > Home office fax: Same as above, phone first for enabling > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > I eat everything. If anything is there, I eat it. I presume it is > safe and good. --U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman > > To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command > "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command > "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". > To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command > "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". > > All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: > http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail > To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Wed Oct 6 14:16:20 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA21878 for ; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 14:16:20 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id NAA13250 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 13:18:57 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from mta1.snfc21.pbi.net (mta1.snfc21.pbi.net [206.13.28.122]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA13230 for ; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 13:18:50 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [63.192.219.119] by mta1.snfc21.pbi.net (Sun Internet Mail Server sims.3.5.1999.05.24.18.28.p7) with ESMTP id <0FJ6004XXYO2O7@mta1.snfc21.pbi.net> for sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 10:16:54 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 06:07:12 -0700 From: Misha Subject: Soil-borne bacteria, life on earth, organics To: SANET-mg Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk Howdy, all-- Some thoughts in response to Russ Bulluck's wonderful thinking on soil-borne enteric (gut-residing) bacteria that he's been sharing lately. I drafted most of this in September, but wanted to let it sit awhile. Some time ago there was a thread of discussion here on SANET about the effects of antibiotics in livestock and poultry operations. Epidemiologists and other folks with a systems perspective on health and disease have been pointing out for some years now that the use of antibiotics in humans and animals is decreasingly effective for what these drugs were intended for: to fight/control disease. And that this poses some unprecedented specters for large organisms like humans. Antibiotics wipe out a broad range of flora and fauna in the bodies of the organisms that are dosed with them. Theoretically, in wiping out those microbes, the target one also falls victim. Some antibiotics are more targeted than others...and some are quite wide-spectrum. When you wipe out any life form, there will be some survivors. They survive by virtue of having resistance to whatever it was that wiped out their amigos. There's no mystery in this: life is an ancient thing on this planet--the fossil record shows the first prokaryotes appearing 3.8 billion years ago. And today's bacterial microbes are just that--one-celled packets of DNA, no nucleus. Whose genes encode a vast history of trial and error. Bacteria have spent nearly all their history working on that DNA. Rather than, like larger creatures, devoting so much energy and intelligence and code to making different nifty tools like beaks or the anglerfish's worm or the chameleon's tongue, or variations in color, or size. When the survivors of a wipe-out event reproduce, they pass along that survivability to whatever killed their fellows--and they even engineer new types. So in the case of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, when they next come into contact with a host organism, they're likely to be even more devastating. Because they are resistant not only to the organism's natural defenses (which they challenged to begin with, and survived) but to these engineered drugs. Not to mention that bacteria go through many more generations than their hosts in the same amount of time. I believe it was Russ who pointed out that some microorganisms cycle through a new generation every 20 minutes. It takes us 20 years. So when there are selection pressures, who's going to adapt more quickly? Not on the individual basis, mind you--on the species basis. (Only humans apparently have the arrogance to worry about themselves on an individual basis, never mind to try to change species to suit their individual needs.) This raises the stakes rapidly from the perspective of us macrobes, who are trying to stay a few inches ahead of the microbes and other small beings whose era this is. What starts out as an effort to control disease (antibiotics) turns out to be an experiment in natural selection--one that encourages these microbes to evolve more quickly and get a lot smarter, fast. The pressure is then on the drug engineers to engineer new drugs...and everybody from CDC and WHO to your next door neighbor is quickly figuring out that that's not a race we can win. We may be smart primates with opposible thumbs, but the rules of life were laid down long before the first flint knife was knapped. Unless, of course, you live in Kansas, where people can choose to ignore observable biological realities because they're just too hard to think about, and their consequences are at odds with a very recent story about how humans were created to have dominion on a planet where they are such newcomers. Reminds me of the technoyuppies who are gentrifying the Mission here; to hear them tell it, they and their gods (computers) invented the place. Gosh, Toto, let's not think about the fact that god created cyanobacteria so long before bipedal primates showed up; it's SOOO depressing. (Remember what happened to Giordano Bruno for claiming that the universe didn't revolve around the earth? But I digress.) The antibiotic resistance issue parallels the model of pesticide use that industrial ag has given us, by the way. That's another losing game not, as some would suggest, because we in sustag have the wrong politics or foofy spirituality, but because from a biological point of view, technicians are not smart enough to outwit How Life Works. Though our Gene Jockeys with their DNA six-shooters and our spray n pray boys think they are. However, all they can do is develop new "technologies" with very impressive initial effects. Like the knockdown effect of DDT. That quickly dissolve, or have unexpected events because we don't fully understand the context in which the effects unfold. Back to antibiotics. The widespread use of antibiotics pretty much guarantees that the "leading edge" of dangerous microbes will expand rapidly in the direction of Appallingly Virulent. Antibiotics accelerate natural selection by constantly stressing the microbial community, encouraging microbial genomes to express and evolve latent resistances. Antibiotics also wipe out the complex balances of microbial activity that for billions of years have held evolution in check for any given species/strain. What epidemiologists are increasingly warning us about is that, in our zeal for killing off Microbe X, we've flushed out whole microbial ecosystems that for billions of years have co-evolved with that microbe. If any people in society right now have lessons to teach about that, it's us in sustainable and organic ag, on the basis of our having witnessed the failure and tragic farce of pesticides in the second half of this century. Entomologist Ken Raffa at UW-Madison (one of CIAS's early research partners) once told me, and I paraphrase: "There's no need to nuke insects to control their populations, but that's the approach we're taught in ag. The fact is that insects hold on to the slippery slope of survival by their fingernails. More research needs to focus on dislodging their tenuous hold on that slope, rather than obliterating them altogether. We've learned over and over that when you try to wipe out a species, you in fact end up losing control tools--because whatever you used to wipe them out won't be effective any longer with the offspring of those who survived that tool. This is basic biology. But too many researchers have this B-movie view of insects as these vastly frightening, horribly powerful creatures that need to be obliterated at any or all costs. The irony is, they *can* be, if we upset the balance enough." By comparison to insects (never mind humans), microbes are damnably smart (adaptive, creative) creatures. THINK about this: /Staphylococcus/ was 100 percent vulnerable to penicillin in the early 50s; in 30 years, fewer than 10 percent of all clinical /Staph./ cases could be cured with penicillin. By the early 90s, vancomycin was seen as the only surefire killer of /Staph./, yet if I remember correctly, the first documented death due to a vancomycin-resistant /Staph./ infection occurred in New York City in 1998 (I'm taking that from memory; don't quote me on that). How did /Staph./ do this? Danged microbes did their own genetic engineering, and picked up a gene packet that defused the penicillin bomb. The microbes who had this little innovation thrived despite penicillin, passed along their trick to their offspring...voila. New /Staph./ strains grow thousands of times faster, give off enzymes that make penicillin-class antibiotics ineffective, and generate potent T-cell stimulators that cause not only hyperexcitation of the human immune system...but eventual collapse of it (as in the case of TSST-1, the strain that causes Toxic Shock Syndrome). Did I mention that penicillin-class antibiotics--like most antibiotics--are derived from organisms found naturally in the soil? The actinomycetes that Chuck asked about (I'm spinning a response to his question separately). Yep, and /Staph./ originate in the soil as well. So why would it come as a surprise that critters that have been co-evolving with certain selection pressures for billions of years are really crafty in devising ways to outfox them? Or that they can devise these ways in just a few decades? We're tinkering with the life of soil, in all of this--the soil we come out of, and return to, has a vast life-web of its own, and has fought battles within itself that we know nothing of. But instead of building host resistance to microbial threats on human health, we focus on upping the ante by developing more and more potent antibiotics. Which in turn lead to the development of more and more potent microbial threats. Or by telling ourselves we can someday "read" the "genetic code" and understand it. This looks, to me, like a game we can't expect to come out ahead on, never mind win. So is it accidental that some of these hugely virulent microbes--like /E. coli/ 0157:H7 and /Salmonella typhimurium/ DT104--are suddenly turning up? Which of them can live in the soil, and for how long? We know that /S. typhimurium/ DT 104 can be passed along thru the feces of many different animals...what other unwitting experiments in genetic engineering (the selection-pressure type, as well as the gene-splicing type)--brought to you by the same pharmaceutical industry that's consolidating its control of GMOs--are passing through the innards of critters in your average factory farm? When are these people who are so clever with their laboratory techniques going to go back to the drawing board, and learn a bit about Life on Earth 101: How Things Work Here? Will we in sustainable ag do the same? It doesn't appear that these answers are easy to get at. I spoze someone could trumpet the need for More Research. That's one of those suggestions that is rarely wrong...but likewise rarely able to keep up with the costs of the technology that caused the problems in the first place. Antibiotic resistance is a side-effect of antibiotic use. Just like pesticide resistance is a side-effect of pesticide use. Here we are, back at the Precautionary Principle. My point is that, if we're doing these experiments in the gut of livestock--exposing enteric microbes to such tough selection pressures--is it far-fetched to imagine that Bossy might suddenly be plopping out some pretty tough bacterial customers, like /E. coli/ 0157:H7? And other players to be named later? That brings me back to the issue of organics. I have strong doubts that such new outbreaks can be blamed on organic farming. To begin with, even if certified organic farmers ARE spreading raw manure on their crops, which they aren't (though I'm sure that J. Random Sensationalist Journalist or Dennis Avery could find an example or two to the contrary, to make headlines with), it's going to be from organically raised animals, not animals who've been hosts to these unwitting and bizarre experiments in evolution and natural selection, generation after generation. Organically raised animals are likely to be animals with immune systems (reminding me of how one of the first things that dairy farmers report after one to three years in a management-intensive grass-based system is that their animals "get healthy"), as well. I'd like to see some research on whether this strain of /E. coli/ can get a foothold in organisms whose immune systems are not compromsed. What I've heard from the FDA about this and other "food poisoning" issues is that it is PRECISELY among the immunocompromised that these microbes' effects go from distressing to fatal. But instead of making it an agenda to build immune system competence, the focus ends up being on more potent antibiotics. From a compassion standpoint, wholly understandable...but clearly at odds with life on earth. The whole point of organics is to try to restore natural balance to ecosystems, and to substitute management for control. It isn't just about "clean food." Which leads me to conclude that, some day, organics, as well as evolution, will be illegal in Kansas--for the crime of daring to posit that the web of life on earth is more complicated than described in the two conflicting versions of the creation myth appearing in the book of Genesis. Here is the World Health Organization's 1997 report on antibiotic use in the food chain: http://www.who.int/emc-documents/antimicrobial_resistance/whoemczoo974c.html peace misha (PS--By the way, I adore the book of Genesis, but not nearly so much as the chapter in Job, where--after he's sitting there howling for 37 chapters about how mean god is, and unfair life is, etc., on and on--he says, "YEAH, and if god were here, I'd give him a piece of my mind and tell him what I think and make him see things my way!" And then, the story goes, the voice spake out of the whirlwind, "Job, gird up your loins like a man, for I'll question you, and you'll answer me." It is, for me, the funniest moment in the Old Testament. You can just imagine the look on Job's face. Then god goes on to wallop him about his arrogance, and the theme is loosely this: "Who do you think you are, claiming to understand your fate and my nature, when you don't even understand the most basic things about life on this planet and how the cosmos works?" Really. Read it for yourself. The litany of the mysteries of the earth, Job 38-41.) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Michele Gale-Sinex Communications manager Center for Integrated Ag Systems, UW-Madison http://www.wisc.edu UW voice mail: 608-262-8018 Home office: 415-504-6474 (504-MISH) Home office fax: Same as above, phone first for enabling ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I eat everything. If anything is there, I eat it. I presume it is safe and good. --U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". 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All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Wed Oct 6 20:22:26 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA28835 for ; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 20:22:25 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id SAA06371 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 18:24:35 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from mail-gw6.pacbell.net (mail-gw6.pacbell.net [206.13.28.41]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA06348 for ; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 18:24:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [63.192.219.119] (adsl-63-192-219-119.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [63.192.219.119]) by mail-gw6.pacbell.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA29414 for ; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 15:23:06 -0700 (PDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <47D8A62215E3D211A0890000C01530FD018B0FC1@pan.nws.orst.edu> References: <47D8A62215E3D211A0890000C01530FD018B0FC1@pan.nws.orst.edu> Date: Wed, 6 Oct 1999 14:11:30 -0700 To: SANET-mg From: Misha Subject: RE: Soil-borne bacteria, life on earth, organics Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk Howdy, all-- I wrote: > > By comparison to insects (never mind humans), microbes are damnably > > smart (adaptive, creative) creatures. THINK about this: > > /Staphylococcus/ was 100 percent vulnerable to penicillin in the And Ernie (Marx) replied to me personally, off list: >Misha - a small point, but my guess would be that the >staph was 99.9% vulnerable in the beginning. It was the 0.1% that was >selected for under antibiotic pressure. If the organism were 100% >vulnerable there would be no resistant genotypes to select for. I want my response--and his catching of me--to be on list... Ernie, you are absolutely RIGHT. I left out a crucial modifier there: was ALMOST 100 percent vulnerable. Thank you for catching that!!!! peace mish ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Michele Gale-Sinex Communications manager Center for Integrated Ag Systems, UW-Madison http://www.wisc.edu UW voice mail: 608-262-8018 Home office: 415-504-6474 (504-MISH) Home office fax: Same as above, phone first for enabling ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is my corn. You people are guests in my corn. --Ray Kinsella (in /Field of Dreams/) To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Thu Oct 7 11:09:52 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA08487 for ; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 11:09:51 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA18873 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 10:13:28 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from amani.ces.ncsu.edu (amani.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.51]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA18865 for ; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 10:13:24 -0400 (EDT) Received: from uni03mr.unity.ncsu.edu (uni03mr.unity.ncsu.edu [152.1.1.166]) by amani.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA06005 for ; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 10:11:57 -0400 (EDT) Received: from unity.ncsu.edu (2405p200.ppath.ncsu.edu [152.1.176.53]) by uni03mr.unity.ncsu.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8/UR01Feb99) with ESMTP id KAA00286 for ; Thu, 7 Oct 1999 10:11:59 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <37FCAB07.4220AC28@unity.ncsu.edu> Date: Thu, 07 Oct 1999 10:15:36 -0400 From: Russ Bulluck X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Sustainable Ag Subject: Re: science by numbers (was: avery's brother) References: <165A27E2191@lufa-sp.vdlufa.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk A recent reference on food-poisonings: Mead, P. S., L. Slutsker, V. Dietz, L. F. McCaig, J. S. Bresee, P. M. Griffin and R. V. Tauxe 1999. Food-related illness and death in the United States. Emerging Infectious Diseases 5: 607-625. Basically Paul Mead at the CDC (who by the way says _he_ was one that Dennis Avery misquoted in "The Hidden Dangers in Organic food," American Outlook Fall'98: 17-22 {Which is what was reported by the Wall Street Journal, Dec. 8, 1998, and is online at www.hudson.org}) writes that 78 million cases of foodborne illness are estimated to occur each year in the US, with less than 9000 deaths occurring each year (as Klaus, I think) reported. (That's a 0.0115% chance, or 1 in 8667.) Russ -- Russ Bulluck Ph.D. Candidate Department of Plant Pathology North Carolina State University PO Box 7616 Raleigh, NC 27695-7616 http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/plantpath/Personnel/Students/webpage.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The soil population is so complex that it manifestly cannot be dealt with as a whole with any detail by any one person, and at the same time it plays so important a part in the soil economy that it must be studied. --Sir E. John Russell The Micro-organisms of the Soil, 1923 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Fri Oct 15 11:18:52 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA01141 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 11:18:52 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA00888 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:35:52 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from amani.ces.ncsu.edu (amani.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.51]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA00821 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:35:46 -0400 (EDT) Received: from uni03mr.unity.ncsu.edu (uni03mr.unity.ncsu.edu [152.1.1.166]) by amani.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA01402 for ; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:34:11 -0400 (EDT) Received: from unity.ncsu.edu (2405p200.ppath.ncsu.edu [152.1.176.53]) by uni03mr.unity.ncsu.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8/UR01Feb99) with ESMTP id KAA10386; Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:34:10 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <38073C3B.DD94568D@unity.ncsu.edu> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 10:37:48 -0400 From: Russ Bulluck X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ted Rogers , Sustainable Ag Subject: Re: The Organic Landscape (long; was Organic EXTREEMLYCheaper) -Reply References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk I think Ted and Ann are both right. I think that the US could be all-organic, (so did Langley, see below), but I also think that time may be passed. I feel that not only are competent farmers required, but equally competent extension agents/specialists are needed. This is a woefully neglected area. I think that even competent/good conventional farmers would be hesitant to throw their hat into the organic ring. It's a gamble. It's a complete unknown. And they would go it alone. . .There is no infrastructure dedicated to helping organic/transitional farmers! If a conventional farmer has a problem (with a disease or nutrient deficiency) he could call up his local Ext. Agent and he would be told what to spray to kill the bug, or eliviate the deficiency. The other night on the new I saw something about "the Freedom to Farm" Act. About how everyone was going to move away from Federal subsidies, and produce different commodities. Well, growers in this Midwest area (not sure where exactly) was still growing corn, and soybeans, just like they (and their neighbors) always had. Prices have dropped through the floor, and more subsidies are being used. I think this is another side to the problem. It's a gamble to change what you know and grow. Maybe I'm way off-base (it's certainly happened before), but in these Midwestern areas, the Ext. Agent/specialist may not be comfortable with different commodities either. . . But. . . back to organic vs. conventional. . . I think the yield difference is more related to soil management/micro-macro- nutrient content, the same way that food quality is related to these elements. When we apply organic amendments and synthetic fertilizers to the same fields (different plots, of course), we had no significant yield differences, except in fields where disease was present. In those fields/plots, soils with organic amendments usually had lower disease, and produced more tomatoes. Fertilizer plots had weights of 236 lbs. in surface mulched (SM) plots, while tilled plots with fertilizer yielded only 67.7 lbs. per plot. Plots with composted cotton gin trash yielded the highest overall amounts, with 187.9 lbs. per SM plot, and 135.4 lbs. per tilled plot. Plots containing hog waste offered 156.6 lbs. per SM plot, and 108.3 lbs. per tilled plot. (BTW, my dissertation will be published before any of the three papers that will come from my diss.) One of the amendments used came from livestock, one was a green manure, the other was an agricultural waste product, composted cotton gin trash (CGT). The CGT gave the best disease suppression, highest overall yields (an average of 161.7 lbs/plot, while fertilizer gave only 151.9 lbs/plot), was free, and reduced environmental pollution. (What was the cotton Gin going to do with it?) The thing that's important is that this information has to make it into the hands of those that can use it! If we can convince growers that not only will organic amendments grow food, bu they can reduce disease, and be sold at a higher price, then I think even the most recalcitrant grower will think twice about organic farming. . . okay, I'm stepping off my soapbox, besides I'm preachin' to the choir here. (I was trying to think of another cliché I could throw in, but drew a blank. . . ) . . . Let me know if I'm wrong. . . Russ Here are some references that I've used in a paper that is planning to be published sometime this (make that the next) millennium: Klonsky, K. and L. Tourte 1998. Organic agricultural production in the United States: debates and directions. Amer. J. Agr. Econ. 80: 1119-1124. Langley, J. A., E. O. Heady and K. D. Olson 1983. The macroimplications of a complete transformation of U.S. agricultural production to organic farming practices. Agric. Ecos. Environ. 10: 323-333. Lohr, L. 1998. Implications of organic certification for market structure and trade. Amer. J. Agr. Econ. 80: 1125-1133. Thompson 1998. Consumer demand for organic foods: What we know and what we need to know. Amer. J. Agr. Econ. 80: 1113-1118. -- Russ Bulluck Ph.D. Candidate Department of Plant Pathology North Carolina State University PO Box 7616 Raleigh, NC 27695-7616 http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/plantpath/Personnel/Students/webpage.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The soil population is so complex that it manifestly cannot be dealt with as a whole with any detail by any one person, and at the same time it plays so important a part in the soil economy that it must be studied. --Sir E. John Russell The Micro-organisms of the Soil, 1923 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Mon Oct 18 10:49:02 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA20584 for ; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:49:02 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA19832 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:04:59 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from amani.ces.ncsu.edu (amani.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.51]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA19775 for ; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:04:53 -0400 (EDT) Received: from uni02mr.unity.ncsu.edu (uni02mr.unity.ncsu.edu [152.1.1.165]) by amani.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA06081 for ; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:03:14 -0400 (EDT) Received: from unity.ncsu.edu (2405p200.ppath.ncsu.edu [152.1.176.53]) by uni02mr.unity.ncsu.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8/UR01Feb99) with ESMTP id KAA22321; Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:03:13 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <380B297E.F097455A@unity.ncsu.edu> Date: Mon, 18 Oct 1999 10:06:54 -0400 From: Russ Bulluck X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: glenn@smallfarms.com, Sustainable Ag Subject: Re: [Fwd: N&O article on hog farm regs (fwd)] References: <380612C9.CD73CB3E@unity.ncsu.edu> <38063F41.236C@smallfarms.com> <38072F58.BDE3C1C8@unity.ncsu.edu> <38078399.7A0@smallfarms.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk Glenn wrote: > Hey Russ, > > Thanks, one more time, for explaining who the NC farmers are and the > flood's impact on them. I tend to hear and remember personal stories > and experiences. Your brother's experience is troubling for me. > > You also have me thinking more about contract farmers. I've tended to > dismiss them in the past, but began thinking of their aspirations and > goals. They may simply be resource limited and see contract farming as > an entry level step into a future independent farm...Hum. > > Good luck on the work for the doctorate. In your future work, think: > small farmer, family farmer, community of farmers. > > glenn > Buy from the Farmer > http://www.smallfarms.com I tend to think of contract farmers like the medieval feudal system. The contract farmers are peasants, and the corporations are nobles. The main difference is that contract farmers often own the land (although not always the buildings, and never the pigs. I'm not exactly sure where the technical points lay i.e. the buildings, however.) The main point I was trying to make is that the farmer is completely responsible for waste management and disposal (even though the animals that produce the waste are not his/hers!) Also, regulations have excluded hog farms (all animal production systems, really) as part of the new EPA regulations for Municipal waste management systems (that's what I've been told, anyway). Let me also state, for the record, that I'm not a legislator, lawyer, judge, hog farmer, or corporation, or anything else that might put me in direct contact with these regulations. I'm a student who is interested in changing an environmental problem into an environmental asset. How? Through the use of composted swine waste solids as fertilizer. Swine waste worked very well in the two year project that I worked on as a fertilizer, however, it was uncomposted, was smelly, and required two weeks before planting could occur (because of a flush of ammonia into the soil post-amendment). I've been thinking about this for a while. If the swine waste solids from some of the counties "Down-East" were composted, much of the environmental hazard associated with swine manure could be eliminated. Since many waste systems (i.e. lagoons) were destroyed thanks to Floyd, now would be the best time to institute changes that otherwise would not take place because of the expense of replacing systems. (Many of the systems must be replaced now, therefore, why not put something useful, and possibly create a value-added product from something that is definitely not palatable. If anyone has handled swine manure, you know what I mean.) First, by making a system where swine manure solids can be removed, taken to a central location (either in a community or county) and composted. Next, the compost could be given back to the farmers as fertilizer for their fields, or sold to the public. The greatest expense would be an initial outlay for the waste management facilities (which currently has to be done anyway thanks to Floyd), system management, and fuel for driving the waste to the central location. On site composting (at each hog farm) might be more efficient, but the potential for incorrect composting would be greater. Further, this system could only work in areas with a concentration of animals (such as several counties in Southeastern NC, where there are more pigs than people). I think it could be a viable system. Of course I am an idealist. . . Two and one half years ago at the Emerging Issues Forum (an annual event with different themes each year. The year I went environmental issues were the theme.) I met our governor (Jim Hunt) and spoke with him about my research, and what I've outlined above. He asked me what I thought this would add to the price of each pound of pork. I said that we would pay for it one way or the other. Either through environmental clean-up (i.e. increased taxes) or through higher pork prices. That was before Fran (1996) and Floyd damaged hog lagoons downeast. Alright, I've said enough (maybe too much). . . I'd like to see these systems put in place, but reality will likely not make it happen. . . Russ -- Russ Bulluck Ph.D. Candidate Department of Plant Pathology North Carolina State University PO Box 7616 Raleigh, NC 27695-7616 http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/plantpath/Personnel/Students/webpage.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The soil population is so complex that it manifestly cannot be dealt with as a whole with any detail by any one person, and at the same time it plays so important a part in the soil economy that it must be studied. --Sir E. John Russell The Micro-organisms of the Soil, 1923 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Tue Oct 19 16:08:07 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA15670 for ; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 16:08:06 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id PAA07484 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:24:17 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from amani.ces.ncsu.edu (amani.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.51]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA07472 for ; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:24:13 -0400 (EDT) Received: from uni02mr.unity.ncsu.edu (uni02mr.unity.ncsu.edu [152.1.1.165]) by amani.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA09110 for ; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:22:34 -0400 (EDT) Received: from unity.ncsu.edu (2405p200.ppath.ncsu.edu [152.1.176.53]) by uni02mr.unity.ncsu.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8/UR01Feb99) with ESMTP id PAA14621; Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:22:34 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <380CC5D3.5F1F26EA@unity.ncsu.edu> Date: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:26:12 -0400 From: Russ Bulluck X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Steve Diver , Sustainable Ag Subject: Re:Organic Landscape Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk First attempt had line wrap problems. I'll try again: I think Ted and Ann are both right. I think that the US could be all-organic, (so did Langley, see below), but I also think that time may be passed. I feel that not only are competent farmers required, but equally competent extension agents/specialists are needed. This is a woefully neglected area. I think that even competent/good conventional farmers would be hesitant to throw their hat into the organic ring. It's a gamble. It's a complete unknown. And they would go it alone. . .There is no infrastructure dedicated to helping organic/transitional farmers! If a conventional farmer has a problem (with a disease or nutrient deficiency) he could call up his local Ext. Agent and he would be told what to spray to kill the bug, or elevate the deficiency. The other night on the new I saw something about "the Freedom to Farm" Act. About how everyone was going to move away from Federal subsidies, and produce different commodities. Well, growers in this Midwest area (not sure where exactly) was still growing corn, and soybeans, just like they (and their neighbors) always had. Prices have dropped through the floor, and more subsidies are being used. I think this is another side to the problem. It's a gamble to change what you know and grow. Maybe I'm way off-base (it's certainly happened before), but in these Midwestern areas, the Ext. Agent/specialist may not be comfortable with different commodities either. . . But. . . back to organic vs. conventional. . . I think the yield difference is more related to soil management/micro-macro- nutrient content, the same way that food quality is related to these elements. When we apply organic amendments and synthetic fertilizers to the same fields (different plots, of course), we had no significant yield differences, except in fields where disease was present. In those fields/plots, soils with organic amendments usually had lower disease, and produced more tomatoes. Fertilizer plots had weights of 236 lbs. in surface mulched (SM) plots, while tilled plots with fertilizer yielded only 67.7 lbs. per plot. Plots with composted cotton gin trash yielded the highest overall amounts, with 187.9 lbs. per SM plot, and 135.4 lbs. per tilled plot. Plots containing hog waste offered 156.6 lbs. per SM plot, and 108.3 lbs. per tilled plot. (BTW, my dissertation will be published before any of the three papers that will come from my diss.) One of the amendments used came from livestock, one was a green manure, the other was an agricultural waste product, composted cotton gin trash (CGT). The CGT gave the best disease suppression, highest overall yields (an average of 161.7 lbs/plot, while fertilizer gave only 151.9 lbs/plot), was free, and reduced environmental pollution. (What was the cotton Gin going to do with it?) The thing that's important is that this information has to make it into the hands of those that can use it! If we can convince growers that not only will organic amendments grow food, but they can reduce disease, and be sold at a higher price, then I think even the most recalcitrant grower will think twice about organic farming. . . okay, I'm stepping off my soapbox, besides I'm preachin' to the choir here. (I was trying to think of another cliché I could throw in, but drew a blank. . . ) . . . Let me know if I'm wrong. . . Russ Here are some references that I've used in a paper that is planning to be published sometime this (make that the next) millennium: Klonsky, K. and L. Tourte 1998. Organic agricultural production in the United States: debates and directions. Amer. J. Agr. Econ. 80: 1119-1124. Langley, J. A., E. O. Heady and K. D. Olson 1983. The macroimplications of a complete transformation of U.S. agricultural production to organic farming practices. Agric. Ecos. Environ. 10: 323-333. Lohr, L. 1998. Implications of organic certification for market structure and trade. Amer. J. Agr. Econ. 80: 1125-1133. Thompson 1998. Consumer demand for organic foods: What we know and what we need to know. Amer. J. Agr. Econ. 80: 1113-1118. -- Russ Bulluck Ph.D. Candidate Department of Plant Pathology North Carolina State University PO Box 7616 Raleigh, NC 27695-7616 http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/plantpath/Personnel/Students/webpage.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The soil population is so complex that it manifestly cannot be dealt with as a whole with any detail by any one person, and at the same time it plays so important a part in the soil economy that it must be studied. --Sir E. John Russell The Micro-organisms of the Soil, 1923 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Sat Oct 23 10:56:09 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA01069 for ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 10:56:09 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA25716 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 10:31:41 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from sscntex.ssc.msu.edu (ssc.msu.edu [35.8.70.66]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA25670 for ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 10:31:36 -0400 (EDT) Received: by SSCNTEX with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2448.0) id ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 10:31:05 -0400 Message-ID: From: "Harris, Craig" To: "'sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu'" Subject: composting Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 10:31:02 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2448.0) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk as you can see, the foodsafe listserv is currently having a discussion on the safety of composted manure, and on the research supporting that . . . i'm not up on the research on composting, so i'm hoping that some on sanet can suggest some places to look for the research on this topic it would be helpful if any responses could be cc'd to: Bill.Adler@sunny.health.state.mn.us ral@lcfltd.com and rbfarr@erols.com thanks for any thoughts on this cheers, craig At 05:06 PM 10/22/99 -0500, Bill Adler wrote: >I think I'm missing soemthing here. This manure is organic waste from the guts of mammals. It's loaded with fecal organisms. Compost it and it's still going to be loaded with organisms, e.g. Lysteria, possibly E.coli 0157, Campylobacter, C. Bot, etc. There should be lots of organisms, especially spore formers, left in it and there is the potential the products it is placed on will be contaminated with them if the manure application is close to the date of harvest. Hmm. I was under the impression that vegetables were still grown in 'dirt', a substance that is known to carry all of the organisms specified! Should we be alarmed? Facetiousness aside, the composting replaces the original flora with a new one, chiefly lactic acid bacteria and others. Where is the risk in manure? It's in having too large a population of human pathogens, due to composting not taking place long enough. How long must composting take place to make manure safe? Good question, and where's the research supporting it? ================================================================ Robert A. LaBudde, PhD, PAS, Dpl. ACAFS e-mail: ral@lcfltd.com Least Cost Formulations, Ltd. URL: http://lcfltd.com/ 824 Timberlake Drive Tel: 757-467-0954 Virginia Beach, VA 23464-3239 Fax: 757-467-2947 "Vere scire est per causae scire" ================================================================ *************************************************************************** * The foodsafe mailing list facilitates information exchange. * * The sender is responsible for content. * * To remove yourself from this list, send email to majordomo@nal.usda.gov * * with the message text: unsubscribe foodsafe * * Foodsafe archives are available at: * * http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodborne/foodborn.htm * *************************************************************************** craig k harris department of sociology michigan state university 429b berkey hall east lansing michigan 48824-1111 tel: 517-355-5048 fax: 517-432-2856 To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Sun Oct 24 11:12:01 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA11953 for ; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 11:12:00 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA25235 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:35:54 -0400 (EDT) Received: from envsci.rutgers.edu (envsci.rutgers.edu [165.230.5.130]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA25121 for ; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:35:47 -0400 (EDT) Received: from bermuda-asy-47.rutgers.edu (bermuda-asy-47.rutgers.edu [128.6.248.175]) by envsci.rutgers.edu (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with SMTP id KAA11885; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:30:43 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: envsci.rutgers.edu: bermuda-asy-47.rutgers.edu [128.6.248.175] didn't use HELO protocol Message-ID: <381341F1.6F1F@envsci.rutgers.edu> Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:29:21 -0700 From: Loren Muldowney Reply-To: loscott@envsci.rutgers.EDU Organization: Individual X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I; 16bit) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: mmiller@pcsia.com CC: sanet Subject: Re: composting References: <3.0.6.32.19991023141405.008c82b0@pcsia.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk mmiller@pcsia.com wrote: > I have one question, who spreads aminal manure on crops "close to the date > of harvest"? In my experience (100 or so people) nobody under the sun does this. I always figured it as part of the strategy of the "biosolids" boosters to completely obfuscate the actual issue (the synthetic compounds and levels of metals) for organic farms, by hijacking it with continued repetition of the terror of fresh poop, so they could once again tell us about the wonders of class A biosolids. I assume that somewhere, deep down inside, at least some of the people at the Water Environment Federation actually do know the difference between elements, microorganisms, helminth ova, and chlordane, so I must further assume that the "confusion" is intentional. I shall leave the other organizations involved in this charade nameless to avoid hurting the feelings of their fine employees, many of whom really are trying to do the right thing despite the leadership and structure of unsaid public agencies. They (WEF) essentially want cowpies, even from singular cows from pasture at sane stocking rates, regulated just like sewage sludge, don't ya know? I know this because I'm not just an unwilling citizen victim here, I'm a member, so I get their fine publications and I read them. > This goes against common sense and I doubt that is allowed > in certified organic operations. It just seems to be a bit of a "when did > you stop beating your wife" type of argument. Mike Miller I think you have correctly identified the central theme here :) Loren Muldowney To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Sat Oct 23 16:00:43 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA04520 for ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 16:00:43 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id PAA26103 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 15:28:13 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from mail.pcsia.com (mail.pcsia.com [206.162.14.3]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA26029 for ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 15:28:08 -0400 (EDT) From: mmiller@pcsia.com Received: from www.pcsia.com (unverified [206.162.14.2]) by mail.pcsia.com (Vircom SMTPRS 4.0.179) with SMTP id for ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 14:26:22 -0500 X-ROUTED: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 14:26:22 -0600 X-TCP-IDENTITY: MMiller Received: from [206.162.14.66] by www.pcsia.com with smtp id 0e43093c ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 14:26:10 -0600 Message-Id: <3.0.6.32.19991023141405.008c82b0@pcsia.com> X-Sender: mmiller@pcsia.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.6 (32) Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 14:14:05 -0500 To: Subject: composting Cc: " " Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk Craig, at the bottom is a recent exchange on bacterial contamination which includes some research results from, I think, Russ's dissertation. Maybe he will chime in here with a more specific answer. I have one question, who spreads aminal manure on crops "close to the date of harvest"? This goes against common sense and I doubt that is allowed in certified organic operations. It just seems to be a bit of a "when did you stop beating your wife" type of argument. Mike Miller >Subject: composting > > >as you can see, the foodsafe listserv is currently having a discussion on >the safety of composted manure, and on the research supporting that . . . >i'm not up on the research on composting, so i'm hoping that some on sanet >can suggest some places to look for the research on this topic >it would be helpful if any responses could be cc'd to: > Bill.Adler@sunny.health.state.mn.us > ral@lcfltd.com and > rbfarr@erols.com >thanks for any thoughts on this >cheers, >craig > > >At 05:06 PM 10/22/99 -0500, Bill Adler wrote: >>I think I'm missing soemthing here. This manure is organic waste from the >guts of mammals. It's loaded with fecal organisms. Compost it and it's >still going to be loaded with organisms, e.g. Lysteria, possibly E.coli >0157, Campylobacter, C. Bot, etc. There should be lots of organisms, >especially spore formers, left in it and there is the potential the >products it is placed on will be contaminated with them if the manure >application is close to the date of harvest. > >Hmm. I was under the impression that vegetables were still grown in 'dirt', >a substance that is known to carry all of the organisms specified! Should we >be alarmed? >Facetiousness aside, the composting replaces the original flora with a new >one, chiefly lactic acid bacteria and others. >Where is the risk in manure? It's in having too large a population of human >pathogens, due to composting not taking place long enough. >How long must composting take place to make manure safe? Good question, and >where's the research supporting it? >================================================================ >Robert A. LaBudde, PhD, PAS, Dpl. ACAFS e-mail: ral@lcfltd.com >Least Cost Formulations, Ltd. URL: http://lcfltd.com/ >824 Timberlake Drive Tel: 757-467-0954 >Virginia Beach, VA 23464-3239 Fax: 757-467-2947 >"Vere scire est per causae scire" >================================================================ >*************************************************************************** >* The foodsafe mailing list facilitates information exchange. * >* The sender is responsible for content. * >* To remove yourself from this list, send email to majordomo@nal.usda.gov * >* with the message text: unsubscribe foodsafe * >* Foodsafe archives are available at: * >* http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodborne/foodborn.htm * >*************************************************************************** > >craig k harris >department of sociology >michigan state university >429b berkey hall >east lansing michigan 48824-1111 >tel: 517-355-5048 >fax: 517-432-2856 To: MMiller From: lrbulluc@unity.ncsu.edu Date: 13 Sep 99 10:32:56 -0600 Subject: Re: ADM -- SPECIALTY MARKET TO THE RICH Klaus Wiegand wrote: > hello mike, > > >Klaus, I suspect that if you looked at your soils you would find > >100 % bacterial contamination. What does this have to do with > >organic produce? > > yep, but we're talking of ENTERO-bacteria here and these you will > not find in soil by itsself (just as the name tells you). they are > a clear sign of bad or wrong hygienic conditions or bad > or unsatisfiing composting. > That's not entirely true. Enteric bacteria (from the Family Enterobacteraceae, including Enterobacter, Shigella, Escherichia, and Salmonella species) are found in soils amended with both organic and synthetic fertility amendments (research that I have been involved with show that on average, after amendment of soil with organic amendments such as cattle manure, swine manure, and different kinds of composts, a spike of enteric bacteria occurs, with between 1*10 to log 6.4-8.1, or more than 1000000 to 100000000 colony forming units, CFU, per gram of soil occurring in soils). Often populations will decline over time in soils amended with organic amendments, while increasing in soils amended with synthetic fertilizers, and over studies have found no significant difference over time in soils regardless of amendment type (1*10 to log 7.2-7.4 CFU's per gram soil). The major point I want to make is that even in soils _never_ (to my knowledge, and one study was conducted on experimental research stations) amended with organic amendments enteric bacteria are _Always_ present. The major question is whether the populations present are pathogenic to people. For the most part, the answer must be no. If pathogenic enteric bacteria were always present in soil, and since most soils (regardless of fertilizer type used) contain enteric bacteria, more food-borne illnesses (on fresh vegetables and fruit) would be attributed to them. Pathogenic enteric bacteria are accustomed (and thrive) in the gut of vertebrates (both warm- and cold-blooded organisms), usually with temps at 37 degrees C (for mammalian pathogens), and an abundant food source. The soil is an oligotrophic environment of highly variable temps and food availability, rarely meeting the optima for growth and development needed for our pathogenic friends. Any organic amendment (regardless of composting, although composted organic amendments have many advantages over uncomposted manures, not the least of which is smell) that is incorporated into the soil and left alone until harvest (2 to 3 months for most vegetables, longer for other crops) few if any pathogenic enteric bacteria will likely remain. Can anyone guarantee that no pathogenic bacteria will be in the soil at harvest, or that contamination with pathogens is impossible? No. However, the regulations required for organic production in the United States prohibit application of raw manures (and in some cases composts) a certain time period before harvest. I'm not sure whether similar regulations exist for conventional agricultural fields or not. . . > and what that does have to do with organic produce ? well, it's the > almost only organic growers, who use feathermeals, guano, > bonemeals. for conventional farmers the relation of nutrient > content vs. price is just too small. > > according to my findings i would say, that a farmer, who neither > uses organic fertilizers NOR sewage slugde, has definite better > hygienic conditions in the field than anyone, who uses EITHER of > them. which other conclusion did you draw from the data ? > Conventional farmers (especially those with other ventures such as hog farming) also use > want a real ugly experience ? just last week we found > out, that main distributors for feedstuff mixed large > amounts of substratum prior used for mushroom production > into the feedstuff. this substratum consists of a smear > of deteriorated and highly contaminated straw, barnyard manure, an > uncountable number of colony-forming bacteria, residues of urea > other unindentified nitrogen fertilizers. then there were amounts of > mycotoxin our gas chromatographs at first could not measure (the > recorder paper was too small!). cows are no waste disposers and > sometimes i doubt about the sanity of human minds, who think, that > this will have no consequences. I can see where this would be a problem. I don't think that material such as these should be placed in feeds! I do know, however, that cow love composted cotton gin trash (correctly composted to temps above 55 degrees C for at least a week or more). They eat it like molasses (according to one farmer I talked to). -- Russ Bulluck Ph.D. Candidate Department of Plant Pathology North Carolina State University PO Box 7616 Raleigh, NC 27695-7616 http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/plantpath/Personnel/Students/webpage.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The soil population is so complex that it manifestly cannot be dealt with as a whole with any detail by any one person, and at the same time it plays so important a part in the soil economy that it must be studied. --Sir E. John Russell The Micro-organisms of the Soil, 1923 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Sat Oct 23 23:17:07 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA07511 for ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 23:17:06 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id WAA26799 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 22:47:46 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from mail.alphalink.com.au (mail.alphalink.com.au [203.24.205.7]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA26764 for ; Sat, 23 Oct 1999 22:47:36 -0400 (EDT) Received: from p2 (d15-as1-can.alphalink.com.au [202.161.121.142] (may be forged)) by mail.alphalink.com.au (8.9.3/8.6.9) with SMTP id MAA12920; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 12:44:44 +1100 From: "Argall Family" To: "Pat Elazar" , "Rachael Pettus" Cc: Subject: RE: compost contents Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 12:52:05 +1000 Message-ID: <000201bf1dca$c17c2080$8e79a1ca@p2> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5, Build 4.71.2173.0 In-reply-To: <99Oct23.083639cdt.26882@mint.cwb.ca> Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.2106.4 Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk Rachael asked about eucalyptus leaves in compost. Pat replied: I noticed on my home farm where we had lots of old Eucalyptus groves that nothing lived either under them or in them so I never tried using them in my compost (we had lots of chicken manure, spoiled hay & unlimited sawdust). On the other hand, the leaves did rot on the ground so they theoretically would rot in a pile? Speaking from the home of eucalypts [Australia] I can confirm that they will not help in the compost. Eucalyptus oil is, as you may be aware, a good disinfectant, as well as a powerful decongestant inhalant. They will certainly slow oxidation, and we do not normally use them in compost. Where they are added, they tend to break down very slowly, though often with a lot of fungi at work near them - the leaves themselves are pretty water repellant and so air and water are trapped around them. But a layer of such leaves in a heap of better rotten material will remain a layer of undigested black leaves for a long time. When we have filled a black plastic type bin, and want to leave it for some time to rot away, a few shovel scrapes of driveway runoff with eucalyptus leaf material makes a good cover layer to exclude flies, etc. Eucalyptus bark and leaves make a good mulch, slow to break down, and with all the tumbling bark strips, quite attractive, if you like the style of the Australian native garden. But not a mulch for vegetables or the like, probably some allopathic effect. I once bought a load of 'compost' from the local recycling centre (it is illegal here to add garden material to the garbage bin; loads of garden cuttings to 4 inch diameter are accepted for recycling. The effect of this quite well aged looking 'compost' was to cause small plants to shrink before the eyes, almost - probably a combination of high ration of C to N, probably heaps of other deficiencies, especially P, but also probably allelopathy. But it obviously sells. We have some eucalypts alongside our fruit orchard. Trees don't grow so well under them. On the other hand, asparagus and strawberries do. This in good deep soil, though. Grass will certainly grow under eucalypts with irrigation (take the walk along main path of Australian National Botanic Garden at http://www.anbg.gov.au/main-path/path.html - but the picture with the grass is far from a natural looking environment). I suspect that a major factor in Pat's groves may have been water competition. Eucalypts, while an adaptation to our phosphorus deficient soils, have been used in a number of other countries in revegetation projects, sometimes with negative effects as they have in some situations become overcompetitive, tending to monoculture without the company of other Australian flora. The other reason why they will survive where other trees will not is that over a long period, they have, as have other Australia plants, adapted to survive fast moving forest fire (blackened trees produce new growth swiftly), and their seeds do not germinate without fire, or immersion in boiling water or sandpapering or a quick spin in a coffee grinder. So in circumstances where many European-American forests will vanish with fire or drought, a eucalypt forest will be rejuvenated. Dominant in the natural forest landscape (to generalise for an area the size of continental USA) is litter from eucalyptus bark and leaves, shed all year, this litter being, in pre-human times and in Aboriginal traditional land management (farming with fire), limited and reduced by regular burning, lighter, more frequent fire having a refreshing impact on the environment rather than infrequent very intense and destructive fires (an important learning experience in the 'modern' management of Australian native forests in recent decades - trying to exclude all fire leads to catastrophic fire). Dennis To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Sun Oct 24 11:12:01 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA11953 for ; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 11:12:00 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA25235 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:35:54 -0400 (EDT) Received: from envsci.rutgers.edu (envsci.rutgers.edu [165.230.5.130]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA25121 for ; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:35:47 -0400 (EDT) Received: from bermuda-asy-47.rutgers.edu (bermuda-asy-47.rutgers.edu [128.6.248.175]) by envsci.rutgers.edu (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with SMTP id KAA11885; Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:30:43 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: envsci.rutgers.edu: bermuda-asy-47.rutgers.edu [128.6.248.175] didn't use HELO protocol Message-ID: <381341F1.6F1F@envsci.rutgers.edu> Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1999 10:29:21 -0700 From: Loren Muldowney Reply-To: loscott@envsci.rutgers.EDU Organization: Individual X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I; 16bit) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: mmiller@pcsia.com CC: sanet Subject: Re: composting References: <3.0.6.32.19991023141405.008c82b0@pcsia.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk mmiller@pcsia.com wrote: > I have one question, who spreads aminal manure on crops "close to the date > of harvest"? In my experience (100 or so people) nobody under the sun does this. I always figured it as part of the strategy of the "biosolids" boosters to completely obfuscate the actual issue (the synthetic compounds and levels of metals) for organic farms, by hijacking it with continued repetition of the terror of fresh poop, so they could once again tell us about the wonders of class A biosolids. I assume that somewhere, deep down inside, at least some of the people at the Water Environment Federation actually do know the difference between elements, microorganisms, helminth ova, and chlordane, so I must further assume that the "confusion" is intentional. I shall leave the other organizations involved in this charade nameless to avoid hurting the feelings of their fine employees, many of whom really are trying to do the right thing despite the leadership and structure of unsaid public agencies. They (WEF) essentially want cowpies, even from singular cows from pasture at sane stocking rates, regulated just like sewage sludge, don't ya know? I know this because I'm not just an unwilling citizen victim here, I'm a member, so I get their fine publications and I read them. > This goes against common sense and I doubt that is allowed > in certified organic operations. It just seems to be a bit of a "when did > you stop beating your wife" type of argument. Mike Miller I think you have correctly identified the central theme here :) Loren Muldowney To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Tue Oct 26 18:05:10 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id SAA24963 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 18:05:10 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id RAA03199 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 17:31:03 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from mta1.snfc21.pbi.net (mta1.snfc21.pbi.net [206.13.28.122]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA03115 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 17:30:57 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [63.192.219.119] by mta1.snfc21.pbi.net (Sun Internet Mail Server sims.3.5.1999.09.16.21.57.p8) with ESMTP id <0FK800KVYBO3HG@mta1.snfc21.pbi.net> for sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 14:29:01 -0700 (PDT) Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 13:17:28 -0700 From: Misha Subject: Animal waste/sludge feeding To: SANET-mg Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk Howdy, all-- From ProMED, here are four items on the issue of EC nations (Germany, Holland, France, and Belgium) feeding animal waste and sewage sludge to animals. p m ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FECES AS ANIMAL FEEDS - EUROPE (03) *********************************** Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 From: Chan Yow Cheong ProMED Regional Moderator for Asia Source: BBC News, 22 Oct 1999 (edited) The European Commission has given France an ultimatum to come up with plans for tighter controls after it was revealed animals had been fed animal waste, and possibly human waste, in feedstuffs. The French authorities have 15 days to come up with suggestions to supervise rendering plants, which boil bones and other waste from slaughtered animals which is then sold on to animal feed makers. The commission launched its investigation in August after French media reported animal feed had been contaminated with dangerous pesticides, heavy metals and human waste. A report published by the investigating scientists on Friday revealed how they monitored controls on sewage sludge at rendering plants and studied the use of sludge collected from waste water disposal systems. The report says: "The mission identified deficiencies in the prohibition of certain substances in the production of feeding stuff. "Certain plants in the French rendering industry have used for years prohibited substances such as sludge from the biological treatment of the waste water or water from septic tanks from their own establishments or, possibly, from their suppliers." France argues since the waste is being heat treated, the resulting matter is safe and can no longer be considered sewage sludge. The Commission strongly disagrees. The report says: "It is still not fully clear if and how the French authorities controlled the segregation between human waste and industrial waste in the waste water disposal system and the subsequent recycling by the rendering plants." The report's findings come at an embarrassing time for the French Government, which has been threatened with legal action by the commission over its refusal to allow the sale of British beef on the grounds it may still constitute a health risk. Conservatives in the UK are now demanding a ban on the import of French meat. ******* [2] Date 24 Oct, 1999 From: Martin Hugh-Jones Source: Countryside, 24 Oct 1999 [edited] Three more European countries have been accused of adding sewage to animal feed - 24 hours after it was disclosed French farmers were guilty of the same practice. The use of sewage from animals and humans in feed is said to have taken place in Germany, Holland and Belgium. Pigs, cattle and poultry are thought to have been fed on it. Last night a food hygiene expert warned that the practice was "inherently dangerous" and could create a BSE-style health crisis. A European Union (EU) disclosure reported some French meat had been produced from animals and birds reared on processed sewage caused outrage among British farmers, already angered over the French government's refusal to lift its ban on British beef. It now appears that the practice has occurred elsewhere in the EU, including Germany, a country which has a record of being obstructive towards British beef. German authorities have denied the reports, but Dutch health officials have admitted finding human sewage being added during the manufacture of animal feed. It is apparently perfectly normal in Holland to add sludge from slaughterhouse water-purification systems to animal feed. At one plant, it was discovered company lavatories were connected to the water system.In Belgium, a regional farming report accused one waste-processing firm of using sludge to make feed. Ingredients are said to have included waste water from showers and lavatories as well as waste from abattoirs. The Belgian agriculture minister, Jaak Gabriels, stated the practice has ceased. The EU banned the use of effluent in animal feed in 1991, but sludge from slaughterhouses, including faeces, is still commonly added to the remains of animals for the manufacture of meat-and-bonemeal (MBM). This was banned in Britain in 1996, but is still widely used elsewhere in Europe. Professor Hugh Pennington, who conducted the inquiry into the _E. coli_ food poisoning outbreak which claimed 21 lives in Lanarkshire 3 years ago, said: "This could be a re-run of the BSE problem, which started because we were recycling dead beef into beef. "Clearly, the material these animals have been getting is potentially full of nasty bugs. It's a classic way of spreading disease by actually eating manure. Now that I know more about what's been going on, I wouldn't buy French." Martin Callanan, a Tory MEP, called on EU officials to investigate the use of animal feed in all member states. "The European Commission has insisted on high standards for our own producers. It's about time they insisted on the same standards for producers in other parts of the Continent." Conservative MPs (Minister of Parliment) want a ban on French meat,in accordance with British farmers* demands. But Tony Blair backed the stance of Nick Brown, the Agriculture Minister, who has refused to ban French meat imports. Archie Norman, the shadow minister for Europe, said Mr Brown was passing up a "golden and legitimate" opportunity to act. He said: "We're not a nation of wimps and the public expect decisive action." He called for an immediate precautionary ban on all French meat products. The European Commission said a questionnaire on the use of sewage sludge in animal feed had been urgently sent to all member states. A spokeswoman said France, Germany, Holland and Belgium had claimed the problem had been resolved. But she could not guarantee sludge was not still being used. The Commission has already sent a reminder to member countries that processing "sludge from sewage plants treating waste waters" is prohibited. ***** [3] Date: 24 Oct 1999 From: Martin Hugh-Jones Source: Sunday Times 24 Oct 1999 [edited] French farmers were unabashed yesterday about their standards of hygiene despite an EU order telling them to stop feeding their chicken and pigs slurry and human excrement. Serge Roumagnac, a farmer outside the village of Caumont, northwest of Toulouse, swept aside concerns and laughed at suggestions that traditional French farming methods were not superior to Britain's high-tech, highly regulated industry. Roumagnac acknowledged the reports last week of farm waste being used in the production of French chicken and pig feed. "Yes, these things go on, but not on the scale that you have had in Britain," he said. "You know we have always taken our produce more seriously and we have not allowed it to be industrialised in the way you have. Our slaughter methods may still be traditional in some cases, but we have not abused the food chain so the risks are not the same. "Our food is anchored in the soil. This is what brings us together in our stand against the beef with hormones from the United States or the risks of the mad cow from Great Britain." His views are not shared by Tim Yeo, the shadow agriculture minister, who will next week embark on a fact-finding mission to prove French standards of hygiene and food production are light years behind the UK. The Tories are determined to show France's ban on British beef is hypocritical and intend to collect photographic evidence from shops, farms and slaughterhouses that standards in France fall short of UK and EU standards. Archie Norman, shadow spokesman on Europe and chairman of the supermarket giant Asda, said last week's sewage scandal alone showed the diversity of standards. "If a British farmer had been discovered feeding animals with sewage- based products, 1,000 bureaucrats would have descended on him and the farm would have been closed instantly." British food campaigners claim a trip to any French butcher or abattoir will show up practices illegal in the UK. French beef is still displayed at markets with spinal tissue and brains, livestock carcasses are not inspected by qualified veterinarians before going to market, and pigs can still be fed on pig bone marrow. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he described the practice of feeding chickens sewage as "horrible" - but stressed it was important to keep the law on Britain's side: "The European commission are doing the right thing. They have examined the issue and are insisting the French comply with the rules the rest of us comply with." ******* [4] Date: 25 Oct 1999 From: Martin Hugh-Jones Source: The Times, 25 Oct 1999 [edited] The British Government has failed to act on warnings from public health advisers that French meat should be banned after a damning European Union report. Independent scientists told government officials they should put in place "a major incident plan" as they did earlier this year over the dioxin scandal in Belgium. The experts have told senior officials there should be a tougher response to the "illegal and unsafe" practices uncovered by an EU veterinary report about the use of human and animal waste and of meat and bone-meal in French animal feed. Senior scientists were canvassed for their views by government officials on Saturday and made clear their concerns about the possible impact on public health. Max Johnston, Professor of Veterinary Public Health at the Royal Veterinary College, and a leading adviser to the European Commission on BSE, was insistent last night: "I think a major incident plan should be put in operation immediately, at least in the short term until France has proven these practices are no longer going on." Professor Johnston,continued, "The bottom line is if it is against the law of the land to do these things the food should come off the market immediately." He questioned why the Government was prepared to act quickly over the dioxin scare but not over the latest French scandal. He described the Government as "pretty lukewarm" and said he had been "extremely frustrated listening to Mr Brown". Tim Yeo, the Shadow Agriculture Minister, will today urge Mr Brown to make an emergency statement in the Commons about the crisis. Many scientists believe the contaminated food products could trigger a BSE-style crisis and increase the number of human cases of "mad cow" disease known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). They are concerned by the use of meat and bone meal in animal feed, a practice banned in the United Kingdom -and linked directly to these brain diseases such as BSE and scrapie. They also fear the risk of new outbreaks of bacterial infections such as _E. coli_, _Salmonella_ spp. and _Campylobacter_ spp., but there is anxiety about increased resistance to antibiotics, the possibility of poisoning from cadmium and mercury and of incidents of tapeworm. The problem for the Government is that the latest food scandal from France has coincided with the controversy over British beef export and the two issues appear to have become blurred. The Conservatives believe the Government's lack of action over this latest French food scare is being driven by political tactics to get France to accept British beef exports. Yet Mr Yeo urged the Government to think again on its response. "They would be entirely justified in banning the import of French meat, particularly from chickens and pigs, because they are thought to be most at risk. There are legal grounds and scientific grounds and they should act now. The danger of not doing this is consumers will decide for themselves and we might have a full-scale trade war, which we do not want." Ministers are anxious to learn whether the EU is to start legal action against France for refusing to allow British exports. A sub-group of the scientific committee in Brussels today will review the French challenge over the safety of British beef. France could also face legal action from the Meat and Livestock Commission and the National Farmers' Union. Both organisations plan to meet lawyers this week to discuss the viability of such a move. The new scandal in France also throws into question its approach to BSE. The number of incidents there is small, about 21 to October this year. To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Tue Oct 26 22:56:13 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: A X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA29120 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 22:56:13 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id WAA01397 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 22:30:45 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from billman.kuntrynet.com (billman.kuntrynet.com [207.40.85.3]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA01287 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 22:30:40 -0400 (EDT) Received: from GregandLeiGunthorp (tnt-15-10.kuntrynet.com [207.40.95.250]) by billman.kuntrynet.com (8.8.7/8.6.9) with SMTP id VAA11701; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 21:29:47 -0500 Message-ID: <001601bf2025$45007580$fa5f28cf@GregandLeiGunthorp> From: "Greg & Lei Gunthorp" To: "Misha" , "SANET-mg" Subject: Re: Animal waste/sludge feeding Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 21:45:01 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3155.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3155.0 Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk Does any of this stuff go on in the US? I think they are not supposed to feed ground up dead sheep anymore, or at least the sheep brains. I'd never heard of the sewage sludge. I guess all these things corporate world loves to hide is just another reason to internalise and control inputs. Best wishes, Greg Gunthorp Producer of Free range pork that has never been fed animal by-products To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Tue Oct 26 23:17:09 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA29470 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 23:17:08 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id WAA16140 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 22:53:49 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from mail.pcsia.com (mail.pcsia.com [206.162.14.3]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id WAA16083 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 22:53:43 -0400 (EDT) From: mmiller@pcsia.com Received: from www.pcsia.com (unverified [206.162.14.2]) by mail.pcsia.com (Vircom SMTPRS 4.0.179) with SMTP id for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 21:51:58 -0500 X-ROUTED: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 21:51:58 -0600 X-TCP-IDENTITY: MMiller Received: from [206.162.14.74] by www.pcsia.com with smtp id 154d2d3c ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 21:51:46 -0600 Message-Id: <3.0.6.32.19991026213929.008fac70@pcsia.com> X-Sender: mmiller@pcsia.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.6 (32) Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 21:39:29 -0500 To: Subject: Animal waste/sludge feeding Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk >To: MMiller >From: mgs23@pacbell.net >Date: 26 Oct 99 17:32:58 -0600 >Subject: Animal waste/sludge feeding snip There is nothing new under the sun. Back in the '80 I managed a briquetting research lab and a couple of the materials we tested were steam dried cow and chicken manures. I learned from my customer that they were triple recycling these materials, cow manure to chickens, chicken manure to cows, 3X in order to recover all the nurtrients in the feed. If memory serves, they were already doing the recycling and just looking at other process equipment for the operation. I hope I am wrong on this but that was my understanding from the customer at the time. That knowledge sure took the joy out of eating fried chicken or a steak. Mike Miller To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Wed Oct 27 00:08:22 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA00192 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 00:08:22 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id XAA24972 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 23:46:00 -0400 (EDT) Received: from luna.oit.unc.edu (luna.oit.unc.edu [152.2.22.4]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA24951 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 23:45:56 -0400 (EDT) Received: from titan.oit.unc.edu (titan.metalab.unc.edu [152.19.254.14]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA29925 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 23:44:11 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (london@localhost) by titan.oit.unc.edu (8.8.6/8.8.6/rchk1.19) with ESMTP id XAA25352 for ; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 23:44:10 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: titan.oit.unc.edu: london owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 23:44:10 -0400 (EDT) From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." X-Sender: london@titan.oit.unc.edu To: SANET-mg Subject: Re: Animal waste/sludge feeding In-Reply-To: <001601bf2025$45007580$fa5f28cf@GregandLeiGunthorp> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Greg & Lei Gunthorp wrote: > Does any of this stuff go on in the US? I think they are not supposed to > feed ground up dead sheep anymore, or at least the sheep brains. I'd never > heard of the sewage sludge. I guess all these things corporate world loves > to hide is just another reason to internalise and control inputs. I heard mention of feeding livestock poultry manure. I would imagine that would be limited to poultry and beef. To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Wed Oct 27 00:24:25 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA00369 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 00:24:24 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id AAA05799 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 00:03:29 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from mail.clipper.net (root@mail.eug.clipper.net [207.109.253.5]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA05789 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 00:03:24 -0400 (EDT) Received: from clipper.net (ppp2.comm02.eug.clipper.net [216.116.34.2]) by mail.clipper.net (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA10394; Tue, 26 Oct 1999 20:59:24 -0700 Message-ID: <38167692.88D854CD@clipper.net> Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 20:50:42 -0700 From: Bruce Elliott Reply-To: fish-world@clipper.net X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.05 [en] (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Greg & Lei Gunthorp CC: Misha , SANET-mg Subject: Re: Animal waste/sludge feeding References: <001601bf2025$45007580$fa5f28cf@GregandLeiGunthorp> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk I know of one company producing equipment that composts chicken manure for the purpose of killing the pathogens to feed to cattle. They are located in Texas and are affiliated with studies done at Texas A&M. What bothers me is the short time they claim (5 days to process). Bruce Elliott 541-895-5990 www.wormwigwam.com Greg & Lei Gunthorp wrote: > Does any of this stuff go on in the US? I think they are not supposed to > feed ground up dead sheep anymore, or at least the sheep brains. I'd never > heard of the sewage sludge. I guess all these things corporate world loves > to hide is just another reason to internalise and control inputs. > Best wishes, > Greg Gunthorp > Producer of Free range pork that has never been fed animal by-products > > To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command > "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command > "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". > To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command > "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". > > All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: > http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Wed Oct 27 08:54:15 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA05780 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 08:54:15 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id IAA19558 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 08:14:51 -0400 (EDT) Received: from envsci.rutgers.edu (envsci.rutgers.edu [165.230.5.130]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA19538 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 08:14:47 -0400 (EDT) Received: from bermuda-asy-9.rutgers.edu (bermuda-asy-9.rutgers.edu [128.6.248.137]) by envsci.rutgers.edu (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with SMTP id IAA20525; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 08:09:39 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: envsci.rutgers.edu: bermuda-asy-9.rutgers.edu [128.6.248.137] didn't use HELO protocol Message-ID: <38171569.229D@envsci.rutgers.edu> Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 08:08:25 -0700 From: Loren Muldowney Reply-To: loscott@envsci.rutgers.EDU Organization: Individual X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I; 16bit) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: fish-world@clipper.net CC: sanet Subject: Re: Animal waste/sludge feeding References: <001601bf2025$45007580$fa5f28cf@GregandLeiGunthorp> <38167692.88D854CD@clipper.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk Bruce Elliott wrote: > > I know of one company producing equipment that composts chicken manure for the > purpose of killing the pathogens to feed to cattle. They are located in Texas > and are affiliated with studies done at Texas A&M. What bothers me is the short > time they claim (5 days to process). Agreed that 5 days seems too short. But... What bothers me is the (unstated) assumption in this kind of study that the only thing which matters is pathogen reduction. This particular blend of science and policy makes a monstrous hybrid, of which many examples can be found. For example: POLICY/POLITICS: decides to only consider pathogen reduction SCIENCE: determines pathogen reduction under highly controlled conditions POLICY/POLITICS: allows the scientific result above to be extrapolated to situations far less defined than the actual research, and labels it "substantial equivalence" or some such rubbish. Calls it "objective" and "scientific" and attempts to bully and belittle anyone who objects to the policy decisions To properly analyze a modeled system, I must ascertain the level of certainty of the model. I view the small system described above as follows: Average level of certainty for policy/politics = 50% Average level of certainty for properly defined primary scientific research = 85% Level of certainty for system modeled above: (.5)(.85)(.5) = 21.25% That is, I might as well flip a coin to decide, if the actual decision is binary. Thus is my level of confidence derived for any system in which there is good reason to believe that many of the decisions are made for reasons other than pure science. Another brand of hogwash is the pretense that the groups broadly described as scientists, citizens, parents, neighbors are non overlapping. So naturally I am being a badly behaved scientist if I dare question the policy decisions made at any step along the way. Treading on sacred ground it appears. Many of us who do research in the general fields of environmental science and toxicology have independently arrived at the general personal conclusion that it is a good idea to derive our diets from rather low regions on the food chain, since it is clear that higher trophic level organisms carry higher burdens of all manner of unwelcome and unnecessary compounds and elements along with the macronutrients than does an equivalent nutrient source derived from a lower trophic level. A person who knows ruminant biology and does not know anything about agricultural policy and practice might reasonably assume that lamb and goat and beef are first level consumers. It is highly relevant to this individual's decision making process that the animal which would, under normal circumstances of it's natural history, be a strict vegetarian, has been made into a carnovore and a detritivore. This individual might very well make a different food choice if all the facts of the production regime were known and were made knowable by the retail consumer. The policy of "substantial equivalence" seems designed to ensure that nobody can access the information needed to make that kind of choice. Does anybody want to defend this strategy as "science" other than "propaganda (marketing) science?" LM To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Wed Oct 27 09:51:15 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: A X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA06546 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 09:51:14 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id JAA00622 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 09:20:16 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from smtp.ncc-mannheim.net (smtp.ncc-mannheim.net [62.104.117.2]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA00611 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 09:20:11 -0400 (EDT) Received: from www.lufa-sp.vdlufa.de (lufa-sp.vdlufa.de [62.132.27.12] (may be forged)) by smtp.ncc-mannheim.net (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id PAA31971 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 15:19:29 +0200 Received: from lufa-sp.vdlufa.de (LUFA.lufa-sp.vdlufa.de [192.168.3.254]) by www.lufa-sp.vdlufa.de (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA29878 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 15:20:31 +0200 Received: from LUFA/SpoolDir by lufa-sp.vdlufa.de (Mercury 1.44); 27 Oct 99 15:12:58 +0100 Received: from SpoolDir by LUFA (Mercury 1.44); 27 Oct 99 15:12:43 +0100 From: "Klaus Wiegand" Organization: Landw. U.-& Forsch.-Anstalt Speyer To: sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 15:12:30 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Animal waste/sludge feeding Reply-to: Wiegand@lufa-sp.vdlufa.de X-mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.22 Message-ID: <3829D32E64@lufa-sp.vdlufa.de> Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk hello lawrence >I heard mention of feeding livestock poultry manure. I would imagine that >would be limited to poultry and beef. the economic calculation behind is the following: poultry digest about 15- 20% of the feedstuff's net energy. this allows a repeated refeeding of the dried manure up to 3 to 4 times before the foodstuff(??) is "sucked out". nice gain..... but on the other side: would you know, that a baker in europe is allowed to reuse up to 10% of unsold and milled old bread for his breaddough of the next day??? is that cheating buyers (who do not know) or a highly morale attitude to deal with our resource food ??? how much bread is thrown into the garbage can every day in the whole USA ?? anybody knows ?? due to hygienic reason i certainly prefer the 2. option !!! klaus To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail From london@metalab.unc.edu Wed Oct 27 14:32:57 1999 -0500 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: Received: from shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (shasta.ces.ncsu.edu [152.1.45.61]) by luna.oit.unc.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA12908 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:32:56 -0400 (EDT) Received: by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id OAA10649 for sanet-mg-outgoing; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:00:58 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: shasta.ces.ncsu.edu: majord set sender to owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu using -f Received: from lh2.rdc1.sdca.home.com (ioracle@ha2.rdc1.sdca.home.com [24.0.3.67]) by shasta.ces.ncsu.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA10612 for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:00:52 -0400 (EDT) Received: from home.com ([24.0.170.104]) by lh2.rdc1.sdca.home.com (InterMail v4.01.01.00 201-229-111) with ESMTP id <19991027175904.YEGV16289.lh2.rdc1.sdca.home.com@home.com> for ; Wed, 27 Oct 1999 10:59:04 -0700 Message-ID: <38173E0B.BE8C70C7@home.com> Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 11:01:47 -0700 From: William Evans Reply-To: williamevans@home.com Organization: @Home Network X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en]C-AtHome0407 (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "sanet-mg-digest@ces.ncsu.edu" Subject: sludge feeding Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu Precedence: bulk Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 21:45:01 -0500 From: "Greg & Lei Gunthorp" Subject: Re: Animal waste/sludge feeding Does any of this stuff go on in the US? I've heard that a great deal of LA sludge goes to mojave desert for the purpose of alfalfa production...turning the desert green...."Indirectly" feeding sludge to anything that would forage on this crop. billevans To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command "unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest". To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command "subscribe sanet-mg-digest". All messages to sanet-mg are archived at: http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail