Re: [compost_tea] Re: NOP Sprouts

From: David Anderson <danderson_at_backpackgeartest.org>
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2004 19:57:35 -0700
Kirk Leonard wrote:

> David -- Clearly you know more than I about sprouts and the NOP issues
> around them.  Appreciate the info.  I know there is an effort to get
> hydroponics supported by NOP but I'm not informed about that.  I think
> hydroponics may be an excellent organic method, thus my curiousity about
> compost tea and sprouts.  CTTF recommendation #9 doesn't make sense on its
> face.

Hydroponics and sprouts are totally different. When you grow a tomato
plant hydroponically, you are not eating the plant 3 days after it
germinates. Even a plant like celery, you are not dunking the entire
plant in it 3 times a day, you are only applying it to the roots and
possibly spraying the plant every couple of weeks.

Sprouts are generally flooded several times a day, and kept in a high
humidity environment without light the rest of the time. Just adding the
nutrients to that environment *could* lead to problems. You could easily
end up with anerobic conditions.

Unless there is test data that suggests otherwise, #9 is the
recommendation that makes the most sense of all. Learn how sprouts are
grown, then think about everything that can go wrong by adding nutrients
to them. Lose your pro-ACT attitude for a while and look at it from the
other side.

And wheatgrass is not sprouts. Wheatgrass is grown in soil, in the
light. Wheatgrass is a toddler, where sprouts are a second trimester embryo.

>
> One among many of the conversations I enjoyed at the ICTC event Friday was
> with a wheat grass grower who'd used  vermicompost teas to "fertigate" them.
> He said Johns Hopkins U had confirmed a protein content in his products 50%
> above normal, no problems just better wheat grass food for cancer
> recoverers.
>
> I never imagined compost tea as a food additive...

It might also be of interest to you that you cannot go out and use "just
any old seed" for sprouts, They have to be harvested and treated as a
food item, not as seed. Everything you do to them has to be approved for
food. If you are going to add something to them, it must be approved as
food.

>>Third, CT is not an approved food additive. You are basically adding 3
>>day old CT directly into the food supply.
>
>
> I don't get this.  What does "3 day old CT directly into the food supply"
> mean?  How does that happen?

Sprouts are harvested only a few days after germination. That means that
at best, you dunked the sprouts in CT a few days before. Your CT does
not have a chance to go through any degradation before it is consumed by
a human.

There is a huge difference between what happens to the CT that you spray
on broccoli 3 days before harvest out in the fields in the sun, and what
happens to the CT that broccoli sprouts are dunked in 3 times a day, and
the sprouts are left in a high humidity warm environment out of the sun
for 5 days. Then they are put in sealed plastic bags to stop their
growth, put in the fridge, and sent to the stores.


> If all you need is clean water to grow sprouts, great.  If compost teas help
> make better products, which I suspect is the case, that's even better.  A
> ban on any form of CT with sprouts seems inappropriate.

I don't think they should allow it on your suspicion that it helps.

I think that it should be banned on sprouts until there has benn plenty
of testing on sprouts.

There is one thing that the organic industry, the sprout industry and
the Compost Tea industry do not need is the equivalent of alar on apples
in 1989.

Dave

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Received on Mon Jul 19 2004 - 00:11:24 EDT

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