“Sewage Garlic Act” - I cannot believe this. It's real.
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Is there any proof that they actually grow garlic IN RAW SEWAGE, or are they using humanure as fertilizer? The outrage at this topic speaks volumes about our lack of comprehension regarding food production.
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/you-asked/it-true-garlic-china-grown-human-feces-and-watered-urine
Was getting ready to search for this. We do this in the US too. I know a guy that works at a municipal water treatment plant. Yes, the solids get processed and sold to farmers as fertilizer.
I don't know about this Chyna thing, gonna look further.
I compost my poop and feed it to my fruit trees. It's a resource, not waste.
Humanure is safer if it's been fully composted.
The reason not to grow vegetables in human poop is because of the human pathogens...specifically bacteria and viruses, and parasites. Bacteria is less of a problem. Composted means that the bacteria and viruses have been eliminated by time and the activity of soil microbes.
It's safer to use humanure on fruit trees because fruit are a kind of descendant of the original plant, and as such it grows differently. Kind of like in human fetuses there develops its own blood supply and chemical profile from the mother within the amniotic sac. The fruit of the plant will get fewer if any human pathogens from the mother plant.
vegetables however (veg being 'you eat parts of or the entire plant') are dangerous to grow in humanure
For many decades, there has been a fertilizer widely sold called "Milorganite", made from Milwaukie sewage sludge.
Milwaukee Organic Nitrogen I learn so much here!
It wouldn't be so bad if sewage was nothing but human waste, but unfortunately, people flush EVERYTHING, and traces of that, including many heavy metals (lead, cadmium, for example), pharmaceuticals, and everything in between, become part of the final milorganite product.