DANGER OF ANIMAL MANURE & SEWAGE SLUDGE

Some interesting information we should know!

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, Why You Should Care?
... According to the CDC, manure can contain pollutants such as antibiotics, pathogens, nitrates, pesticides, hormones, trace elements and heavy metals, none of them good, especially if they enter the drinking water. In May 2000 an e-coli contamination of the municipal water system of Walkerton, Ontario Canada killed seven and sickened thousands. It was traced to manure runoff....... CAFOs are said to be an efficient cost effective farming system; (if one ignores the cost to the environment, animals living in unnatural conditions, potential for pollution and possible human health concerns). They are necessary only as long as we demand large amounts of grain fed meat, dairy and eggs. If cheap food is the only priority, they meet the challenge. Most consumers happily hunt for bargains never questioning the production practices that made the bargains, bargains.......

Is the environment responsible for Mad Cow disease and its human counterpart?
...That conference is all about manganese, a heavy metal, that is essential to life and is part of the daily diet--for example, wheat, rice and tea provide the metal--but numerous studies show that environmental overexposure to it can be dangerous to the nervous system.... In short: The high doses of organophosphates that were poured on the cows' spines and poisoned the bodies decreased the amount of copper in cells. The feed given to animals in the '80s contained high amounts of manganese, some of it derived from chicken manure of chickens fed high doses of manganese to strengthen egg shells. Supplemental powders and mineral licks with manganese were sometimes added to feed troughs. The depletion of copper and the high manganese changes normal prions to abnormal, thus setting the stage for disease....

Organic Fertilizer or Toxic Sludge
...Scientific evidence has confirmed that municipal sewage sludge contains hundreds of dangerous pathogens, toxic heavy metals, flame-retardants, endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, pharmaceutical drugs and other hazardous chemicals coming from residential drains, storm water runoff, hospitals, and industrial plants. ...

Toxic Sewage Sludge in Your Food
...The increasing use of sewage sludge as fertilizer for your food is an under-publicized and often hidden threat... scientific analysis of the poisons in sewage sludge shows it's the wrong, and dangerous, solution for U.S. farmers and communities. Unfortunately, many American farmers and gardeners are unknowingly using sludge-derived "compost," which is given away free in many cities throughout the United States....

Sewage Sludge is Being Dumped on (Non-Organic) Farms All over the US
..The stuff smelled a bit like ammonia, but the phosphorus, nitrogen and organic matter would boost yields on this 50-acre field from 140 bales of hay this year to 200, maybe 250 in 2004. It's also full of soil-enriching organic matter. And the fertilizer, all 600 tons of it, was free .... Recycling sewage sludge on fields has become the disposal method of choice for most of the 15,000 municipal waste water plants across the United States. More than 60 percent of the 5.6 million dry tons of sludge produced nationally ends up on fields - 3.4 million tons total, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.... "I couldn't operate if I had to buy commercial fertilizer," Salzar said, noting the difference would be thousands of dollars each year, his margin between profit and loss....But the report stopped short of linking land-applied sewage sludge, often called biosolids, with any specific health problems... "Nobody likes sewage sludge, just as nobody likes pollution," Richardsadded. "It's just that some people are unjustly profiting from it at the expense of everyone and everything else, especially our soils and waters.".....

Cattle feed now contains things like manure
... to determine how E. coli bacteria had tainted the hamburger... To trim costs, many farmers add a variety of waste substances to their livestock and poultry feed-and no one is making sure they are doing so safely. Chicken manure in particular, which costs from $15 to $45 a ton in comparison with up to $125 a ton for alfalfa, is increasingly used as feed by cattle farmers despite possible health risks to consumers. .... more and more farmers are turning to chicken manure as a cheaper alternative to grains and hay..... Chicken manure often contains campylobacter and salmonella bacteria, which can cause disease in humans, as well as intestinal parasites, veterinary drug residues, and toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. These bacteria and toxins are passed on to the cattle and can be cycled to humans who eat beef contaminated by feces during slaughter....

Why Feeding Chicken Manual and Slaughterhouse Waste to Cow is a bad Idea
...agricultural societies, have always fed waste products to livestock. On diversified farms, pigs and chickens get lots of kitchen scraps and "culls"--produce that can't be sold. And it's worthwhile to keep cows around if you have access to pasture--cows convert a wild, low-input perennial crop (grass), which humans can't digest, into highly nutritious beef and milk.....