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Subject: Market Farming
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- From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
- To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training
- Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 14:54:14 -0500
On Mar 3, 2010, at 1:35 PM, KAKerby AT aol.com wrote:
Thanks. The link does work, but only gets me to an abstract. The page has a tab to click to get the actual article; but it would cost me $31.50 to do so, and I'm not feeling rich enough right now. I don't think any library I have easy access to gets Food Microbiology.
Well, yes. And if Farmer Joe is breathing, then he might be inhaling marijuana, or H1N1 flu virus. Maybe we'd better stop him from breathing, to make sure that he can't breathe the wrong thing. Any field can be, and in practice will be, at least occasionally contaminated by "poo"; unless the crops are grown entirely indoors under sterile conditions; and it would have to be the kind of sterile conditions that involve sealed rooms with workers sticking their hands into gloves through ports. (After which I suppose each individual item would have to be sealed in sterile packaging, not to be opened until it reaches the final consumer.) Birds fly through the sky, last I noticed. Mice get into an astonishing number of places, including many indoor places. And as you note, human workers also produce e coli, and while hygiene really needs to be and should be encouraged, there's no practical way to guarantee that absolutely everybody's hands and clothes are sterile every time they come into the field. The issue really can't be, "is there some theoretical possibility that pathogenic E coli can get into this system", let alone "is there some theoretical possibility that non-pathogenic e coli can get into the system". The issue has to be, "What overall systems significantly decrease or increase the chances of pathogenic E coli, and other pathogenic organisms, being in the crop at harvest time?" The survival time of non-pathogenic strains, or even of pathogenic strains, while it's useful information, is only one of many factors to consider in overall management systems, and such survival itself is extremely likely to be affected by all sorts of other factors. Again, we were told at the FDA meeting that there are strong indications that the use of "indicator organisms" techniques, at least as currently used, is not effective. Would you have major surgery based on the results of a medical test that gave massively more false positives than accurate results, possibly by factors of thousands or millions?
It is certainly possible that pathogenic e coli can survive, for instance, in Kim's specific farming system for 210 days, or even for 2100 days. But that study is unlikely to prove it. It's also possible that specifically pathogenic strains can only survive in Kim's particular system for two and a half days before something beneficial in that farm's manure eats them. None of us knows the answer. It would be a good idea to find out.
We do indeed need to minimize it. The question is how we can actually do so. I did just read the abstract of the study, and it leaves most of my questions open (some of them may be answered in the full study.) It does state that they used "an avirulent strain of E. coli O157:H7" and implies that that particular strain survived, though as I don't have the whole study it's not clear to me whether they did test for the specific strain or only inoculated with the specific strain (possibly along with whatever else was in the manure) and then tested for e coli in general. I also read "avirulent" to mean "nonpathogenic", so either this was only a nonpathogenic relative of the dangerous strain, or it had been modified in some way to make it safe; either of these might affect survival rates. I also note that in order to get the strain they used into their manure composts, they inoculated the composts with the strain: presumably because they thought there was no pathogen in the material before they inoculated it. A large part of the question is, of course, how often manure from given species, living in particular ways, in particular areas, is actually infected with pathogenic strains; and how we can reduce the chances of its so being infected.
Yes, this I'm aware of. I don't know, however, whether they have been so ID'd only in circumstances in which they have been in contact with strains emanating from feedlots (for instance, because the strains got into their drinking water from runoff from feedlots); or whether the pathogen is as common in grass-fed animals and wildlife as it is in feedlots (if, say, 10% of feedlot livestock have it, but only 1% of livestock raised in small operations with some grain and some pasture and 0.1% of entirely grass-fed livestock have the pathogen, then the pathogen could still be massively reduced by getting rid of the feedlot technique-- please note I just made those figures up as examples! and that may not be what's actually happening). One of the nasty things about problematic living organisms produced by modern (or non-modern, for that matter) techniques is that they often don't stay where they started out. Decreasing the use of the techniques that caused them in the first place may still be a good idea. -- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly Fresh-market organic produce, small scale |
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Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training
, (continued)
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, William H Shoemaker, 03/04/2010
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Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training,
KAKerby, 03/02/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, Ryan Platte, 03/02/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, KAKerby, 03/02/2010
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Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training,
KAKerby, 03/03/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, Road's End Farm, 03/03/2010
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Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training,
SaladG, 03/03/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, Road's End Farm, 03/03/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, sunnfarm, 03/03/2010
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Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training,
KAKerby, 03/03/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, Road's End Farm, 03/03/2010
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Re: [Market-farming] Worms and manure,
Celeste Illgner Havener, 03/04/2010
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Re: [Market-farming] Worms and manure,
Todd Lister, 03/04/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] Worms and manure, Casey & Teena, 03/04/2010
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Re: [Market-farming] Worms and manure,
Todd Lister, 03/04/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, clearviewfarm, 03/03/2010
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Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training,
KAKerby, 03/03/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, Roots Farm & Karen Sutherland, 03/03/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, mamica5, 03/03/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, Road's End Farm, 03/03/2010
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Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training,
Road's End Farm, 03/03/2010
- Re: [Market-farming] manures/GAP training, William H Shoemaker, 03/04/2010
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