Re: [compost_tea] what do the acronyms stand for?

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 12:43:59 EDT

CTTF - compost tea task force. They submitted a report listing
recommendations about compost tea regs to the NOSB - which is the National Organic
Standards Board.

The NOSB has the recommendations, and are accepting comment on the
recommendations right now. They will rule on the regs next March, I believe.

The CTTF report has mostly good information in it, but some very
inappropriate statments as well. I had commented on most of them to the person writing
the report, but he kept the inappropriate statments in the report, regardless of
comment from me. Some things he changed, most he did not.

So, for example, the recommendation in the CTTF report is that compost
leachate can only be held for an hour, with no suggestion about what happens if it
is held for longer. Can't one at least then test the material for human
pathogens? If the big concern from the UDSA Compost group is pathogens in the
compost, and therefore in the tea, or extract, why can't things be tested to show
there is no problem?

The CTTF recommendations suggest that testing compost twice is adequate to
determine a compost is properly made (i.e., E.coli not present, or below problem
levels). The recommendations suggest compost tea can be tested fro human
pathogens, and be acceptable if no pathogen, or below levels, are found.

So, what about compost leachate?

The "research" that the USDA people have done has been to take poorly
designed compost tea set-ups, and do everything needed to make sure that E. coli
will be present in the brew, and then show that indeed, they can grow E. coli.

One paper, the work done by BBC and reported only in non-peer-reviewed
meeting notes, used not-finished compost. It most likely didn't contain the set of
organisms that would compete with E. coli, and there was E. coli in the
compost. they did not measure oxygen through the WHOLE brew. and yet claim that the
brew stayed aerobic through the whole brew. What hogwash.

They used conditions that don't begin to meet the requirements for compost
tea production. And yet they want the compost tea world to be limited because
they can mess up in their production methods?

The Duffy paper - they put manure-laden organic matter in a sealed flask,
with sugars, and grew E. coli like you wouldn't believe.

In what way is that a compost tea brewer?

And yet, some of the folks on the CTTF wanted to limit compost tea based on
that kind of "research".

Good, properly made compsot has to be used in compst tea production. Define
the rules that way. The compost has to be made according to organism regs, or
the compost has to be tested, or the compost tea has to be tested.

These are OR statements, not AND statements.

Before the whole compost tea world is burdened with impossible regs, show
that properly made compost, used in a properly made compost tea machine, whether
an aerated machine in 24 hours, or an anaerobic condition that has to go for 3
months before being finished, MIGHT be a problem.

There are no data from the USDA world that these situations results in
problems.

And until there is some data on properly made compost tea resulting in
difficulties, there is no reason to burden the industry with fear tactics,
scare-mongering and bugga-boos.

If you want, you can set up a situation where you can show that E. coli grows
in bread. So, do we shut down bread-making, or require that every loaf od
bread is tested for E. coli?

We all know that's silly, but it's the same thing the USDA compost group
people have done so far.

And so, the NOP - which stands for the National Organic Program - is being
administered by the USDA. If you've watched some of the out-right sabotage that
Anne Veneman has tried to pull with the NOP so far, you won't have any
problem understanding what they are trying to pull with compost tea.

CFR - - hum, it's the document that has the organic regs. People refer to
the place in the document for the different regs. As you might guess, it gets
to be heavy reading. and there are lots of mental burps in the document, such
as Kirk pointed out.

There is a great deal of work that needs to be done to establish organic
regs based on a weight of evidence, rather than tradition. But until that
weight of evidence has been put together, tradition is all we have. And that's
where you get some of the silliness with "this compound is ok, because we've
always been able to use it", while something more recent is not allowed,
because we know it is toxic, and it has no traditional use behind it.

And the CTTF left the whole issue up in the air, with no basis for what
cleaning agents were ok, and what weren't. The report also DID NOT LIST what was
meant by microbial food resources that allow human pathogens to grow.

Is that any sugar? But compost has many, many kinds of sugar in it, so does
that mean ALL compost tea has to be tested for human pathogens? If the
compost was tested, and was human pathogen free, even though it was made with manure
(we get many composts that test pathogen-free), why do you have to worry
about the tea, even though there were some sugars added? There are sugars in the
compost. We have tested many, many compost teas that start with E. coli in
the compost, but none are present in the tea.

We have composts with E. coli. and there's E. coli in the tea. What
happened? Why didn't the tea organisms take out the E. coli? We have to figure that
one out, and hopefully, some of hte testing being done this summer will answer
that clearly.

So, lots to do. Grin! Hope this little intro gives you an idea of the
relationship between these acronyms.

Elaine R. Ingham
Soil Foodweb Inc., Corvallis, Oregon
Soil Foodweb Inc., Port Jefferson, New York
Soil Foodweb Institute, Lismore Australia
Soil Foodweb Institue Cambridge, New Zealand
Soil Foodweb Inc., Hilversum, The Netherlands
Laboratorios de Soil Foodweb, Culiacan, Mexico
Soil Foodweb Inc., Jerome, Idaho




Received on Thu Jun 17 2004 - 13:08:27 EDT

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