Hi Chris
You should not be too worried about the use of animal by-products. There is=
a guy in England, Mark Purdey, he found out, that the real cause of BSE ca=
n be linked to the use of Organophosphates, an insecticide that is applied =
to the back of the cow as a treatment against the warble fly, coupled with =
deficiencies in trace elements like manganese etc. in the animal.
Please visit the following websits for a better explanation on the causes o=
f diseases like BSE, CJD, Scrapie etc.
http://www.purdeyenvironment.com/
http://www.markpurdey.com/
I think it is in Iceland, where the farmers since centuries eat Sheeps (inc=
l. brain) that are infected with Scrapie (a disease very similar to BSE) an=
d there was never any infection of humans.
Have a nice Sunday
Marcus
----- Original Message -----
From: chris reid
To: Compost Tea
Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 9:18 AM
Subject: [compost_tea] bone meal and mad cow
In terms of whether the mad cow fear is overblown, I tend to respect the
possibility and since it is no big deal for me to use another source of
phosphorus, choose to do so. It can take up to 10 years for the disease =
to
manifest itself. Thus, if there were a problem, it's quite possible that=
it
would not be discovered until long after the contamination occurred.
The US has under the current administration decreased its testing of beef=
.
This article below is from a citizen interest group, and is not footnoted=
so
we can know the source of its info. It, however, describes the hesitation=
I
have about whether domestic sources of beef are in fact free of disease. =
We
test far less stringently than other countries, and Germany, which once
claimed not to have mad cow, started testing more stringently and found o=
ut
it was wrong.
http://seattle.earthsave.org/TestCowsNow.pdf
The next question that I am unclear about is: how do we know that produc=
ers
of fertilizers sold in the US are using domestic sources of bone meal tha=
t
have been processed according to the standards dakesian1 has described. =
It
sounds like if we could know that, then the risks of bonemeal being a sou=
rce
of mad cow would be unlikely to be present.
I still don't know the answer to that part of the question.
Chris Reid
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Received on Sun Nov 23 2003 - 16:24:29 EST