This is a public-interest archive. Personal data is pseudonymized and retained under GDPR Article 89.

Bone- or Bloodmeal and BSE

At 10:03 AM 12/23/97 -0700, British gardener
>Colin <crshaw@mcmail.com> wrote:
>
>[...]
>> humus. BUT, I will not use blood or bone meal (for obvious reasons  -
>> living in the UK!)

And Canadian Bob Carter later added that he's "moving away from blood and
bone" himself.

It might be appropriate now for me to fill in a few blanks in case listers
have not been closely following the situation with regard to bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or "mad cow disease," in the U.K. and now
other parts of Europe.

BSE is a fatal CNS degenerative disease of bovines caused by a
still-uncharacterized agent that is extremely small and resistant to death
by normal heat processing of infected tissues.  Fortunately, BSE mainly
resides in only some parts of an infected cow's body, NOT including muscle
tissue.  So eating beef from a BSE-infected cow theoretically poses no
problem.  However, organ meats from the same cow are a no-no.

The rendering plants where bones, hooves, offal, etc., go to be melted down
and mixed into ag feeds, fertilizers, etc., used to use a solvent-extraction
method that killed the BSE agent.  However, about 15 years ago or so, the
solvents were found to be dangerous to people working in the plants (sort of
like the petrochemicals used in the dry-cleaning industry), and renderers
moved away from solvent extraction to high-heat methods.  Unfortunately,
years after the fact, scientists have discovered that high heat alone does
not reliably kill all the BSE organisms.

So when waste from a carcass of a BSE-killed cow enters the rendering chain
and the renderer's methodology does not reliably kill off the BSE content of
the carcass, any ultimate products (bone meal, blood meal, meat-and-bone
meal) *could* still harbor live BSE agents.

For quite a few years, nobody believed that BSE could affect people.  But
recent evidence indicates that the BSE agent may cause a new variant form of
the very rare Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndrome, a similar degenerative CNS disease
usually found only in rather old people.  It closely resembles Alzheimer's
disease and is often mistaken by clinicians for it since dementia and ataxia
are among the presenting symptom of both.

Richard Rhodes, in his book "Deadly Feasts," quotes scientist John Gadjusek
(the first world expert on this class of diseases) in suggesting that
gardeners avoid use of bone meal and blood meal entirely.

Gadjusek noted that among the first group of 10 victims of new-variant CJD
in Britain were 4 people who ate NO beef.  All 4 were gardeners, however,
and all 4 used bonemeal.

Applying bonemeal to garden soil would almost invariably expose the
applicator to inhalation of ground-up bone fragments.  The BSE agent could
lurk in that cloudy dust.

Let me hasten to say that there have been NO cases of BSE in the United
States.  I know this because I work for the USDA agency that's in charge of
keeping it out, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.  But I don't
think by examining the label on American bonemeal in garden supply stores
you can tell for sure where the ruminant-derived protein material came from
which that meal is made!  Some months ago, I looked at the Dragon brand
bonemeal bag carefully, and there was no clear evidence of its source of
ingredients.

Let all gardeners err on the side of caution, however.  Bonemeal and
bloodmeal are off my adjuvants list, and I suggest others cross them out as
well.

--Janet Wintermute

--
To unsubscribe, send a message to: majordomo@lists.umsl.edu
with the single body line: unsubscribe sqft
Contact owner-sqft@lists.umsl.edu with any admin questions.
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index