North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>]

"The average udder lies in manure at least
once a day."


I had a Jersey cow once long ago, and one cow is a LOT cleaner than any 
commercial dairy.  Later we had milk goats, which are much neater than cows 
anyway, now we have eggs that sometimes require wiping off chicken manure, 
and we butcher our poultry ourselves.  I don't actually mind any of this, to 
me the manure from birds and herbivores is somehow "cleaner" than from 
carnivores or even the dirt in places where there are lots of people.  And 
the meat from our birds is fresh, really fresh, so I don't have to think 
about how long it might have been growing some kind of nasty bacteria. 
Grocery store meat seems a lot creepier to me, and I hear that people from 
Europe are rather freaked out by the warning labels on American meat.
   What we DO know about the bad strain of E. coli is that it is VERY easy 
to catch, and that it is favored by feeding lots of grain.  That means that 
deer that eat in cornfields and then hang out in orchards are more likely to 
carry the stuff.   Then there's the question of whether you who might be 
exposed to the bacteria, eat lots of grain, or more vegetables.  Grain tends 
to alkalize the gut and make it easy for E. coli to grow.  In Japan lots of 
people were taking probiotics to keep from catching it.     Donna