Compost Heap. Horse Manure. Pathogens.

[Wild Billy]

Worst case scenerio, take 2.

Forgot my cite :o))

Vegetable Gardens and Drainage Fields Sometimes the ideal place to put a vegetable garden seems to be over the leach field, raising the question of bacterial and viral contamination from the effluent. Soils vary a great deal in their ability to filter viruses and bacteria. Clay soils work best, eliminating bacteria within a few inches of the drain trenches, but sandy soils may allow bacterial movement for several feet. A properly operating system will not contaminate the soil with disease-causing organisms, but it is very difficult to determine if a field is operating just as it should. If at all possible, use your septic drain field for ornamentals and plant your vegetables elsewhere.

If you must plant vegetables, take the following precautions. Do not plant root crops over drain lines. Leafy vegetables could be contaminated by rain splashing soil onto the plant, so either mulch them to eliminate splashing or don't grow them. Fruiting crops are probably safe; train any vining ones such as cucumbers or tomatoes onto a support so that the fruit is off the ground. Thoroughly wash any produce from the garden before eating it. Do not construct raised beds over the field; they might inhibit evaporation of moisture.

-----

The moral is, don't use fresh manure on the edible portion of something you may eat in the next three months.

[Jeff Layman]

No, and they never did, although it was a tragedy for those families who lost loved ones.

It was just one of those hyped-up extraordinarily rare diseases which "professors" who should know better (but obviously didn't) pontificated about in a purely self-publicising manner. The main pathogenic effect of MCD was to sell newspapers.

[nmm1]

That's utter tripe - to make an awful pun!

The government had covered it up for so long, and its properties were such, that the 'worst plausible' scenario was that it would become the dominating cause of death in the UK and reduce the national life expectancy by a decade or more. Yes, THAT bad.

And, precisely because of its properties, it wasn't possible to refine the estimates of its seriousness for several years. Nobody knew whether it would be negligible (as it seems to be) or approach the 'worst plausible' scenario. Even now, we aren't quite certain that it won't become a hundred times more serious than it is at present, though it is unlikely.

Furthermore, such a disease had been predicted by the government's scientific advisors, who repeatedly refused to support relaxing the animal feed processing regulations. The Whitehall mandarins then replaced them by a more docile (and possibly more ignorant) set, relaxed the regulations and created a new disease.

Regards, Nick Maclaren.

[The moderator]

I think you made the OP's point. The worst plausible scenario was not plausible.

[Martin Brown]

It didn't do cattle farmers much good. They took all the flack but were not responsible for it. Animals died a particularly nasty death as did a few very unlucky humans. Most could be traced back to cheap and nasty mechanically recovered meat characteristic of your average junk food vendor. Some real cuts of meat also ceased to exist as a result.

And all to make a few extra bucks for the feed companies by cutting corners on the processing.

It was bad enough that living in the UK during the relevant period prevented you giving blood in countries nominally free from BSE/nv-CJD. The infectious agent was just too hard to detect in the early days.

Prions seem to be rather potent infective agents if they get the chance. It is also potentially a very slow burning infection in humans so it is possible that the damage already done will only show up around 2030.

It isn't clear whether they created a new disease or massively amplified the transmission rate of an existing low level illness by forcing ruminants to become cannibals and adding diseased meat into the mix.

I suspect if they had restricted this cavalier practice of putting noxious junk into animal food to pigs there would not have been a problem. Omnivores are better able to cope with a dodgy diet. Infected cows died a horrible death which did at least alert people to the problem. It only really made the news when it got too common to ignore.

The official view at first was that it was scrapie which was the equivalent disease in sheep didn't pose a problem for humans. That was fine until people started to die of nv-CJD. I would still like to see some of the cowboys that relaxed the rules prosecuted. YMMV

Regards, Martin Brown

[nmm1]

Precisely.

No, it has been definitely identified as different from scrapie, in being more easily transmitted across species and (if I recall) rather nastier even in sheep.

It was also due to a couple of whistle-blowers. The government was doing its usual (attempting to scapegoat them) when the publicity started, and they backpedalled as fast as only Whitehall can. If it hadn't been for them, we would have had an extra couple of years before any action was taken.

Regards, Nick Maclaren.

[nmm1]

You're wrong. It was horribly plausible, given what was known at the time.

Regards, Nick Maclaren.

[Bill who putters]

Bottom line for me is try not to eat any thing that eats it own.

[David Hare-Scott]

Only the politicians

David

[Martin Brown]

Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that it was scrapie. More that it was a pre-existing condition in just a handful of cows either arising spontaneously or as a very low level rare infection that stayed below the radar. If a vet only saw one case in a lifetime for instance.

It was only when we provided a means for the infection to spread rapidly that exponential growth in the number of cases occurred.

I wonder if Gummers granddaughter still eats burgers?

that total fiasco it was no surprise that government statements about GM food being safe to eat were not believed.

Regards, Martin Brown

[nmm1]

Ah. Yes, I agree that is possible. I believe that the consensus is that it was a new variant of scrapie, but nobody knows for sure, and your hypothesis is very plausible.

The motto of the British government is "Never tell the truth when a lie will do."

Regards, Nick Maclaren.

[RJBL]

Sorry missing clause in original post. Should have read :-

increase, over the last few decades, in enteric illness is unestimated.

The various enteritis illness, some trivial some not so, have increased in frequency by a couple of orders of magnitude since the 1960's. If you refer back to your old bacteriology notes you will see that Cl. tet. and Cl Wel. are both common commensals in the herbivore gut and their sporulation occurs in the soil after the horse or cow has excreted the bugs. Sure, tetanus and gas-gangrene are now rare in the UK; probably because any injury requiring even outpatient treatment get an AT shot as routine. From time to time cases occur of very trivial injuries - eg thorn prickles whilst pruning, which are not considered worth further attention until tetanus has developed.

Yep, we all need or resident E. coli - but not one of the enteropathic strains. If you are into organic methods treat any edible produce as contaminated

rjbl

[Jeff Layman]

To twist the original thread name, your reply is bullshit. "Horribly plausible"? To consider what might occur there is Definite, Probable, Possible, and Plausible. It was plausible that the earth was flat until proved otherwise. I suppose it was plausible that the moon was made of green cheese before the facts were examined carefully.

I suggest you go back and read some of the "scientific" comments made at the time. I had access to all the main medical and general (such as "Nature") journals at the time (1996) and could not believe what I was reading in them. I was ashamed to be called a scientist. The term "junk science" appeared a dozen of so years earlier, and many of the comments were junk science in spades. After reading several of the "plausible" scenarios I made the very simple decision to continue eating beef - even mince. I put my mouth where my money was to turn a saying. I did really well as the price of beef fell. In fact, I was wrong in my original posting - the main pathogenic effect was on unfortunate famers. I haven't checked the figures, but I would guess that more beef farmers have died through stress or suicide as a result of financial worries caused by MCD than those people who have died from MCD.

Here is a comment from the first news archive in

'Few understood that when it comes to safety in food, the perception of risk is not mathematical. It's psychological. One young man who gave up beef explained his decision this way: "They say the risk of getting the disease is one in a million or about the same as winning the lottery. And that may be true. But every week I play the lottery."'

Someone will win the lottery, and someone will die of MCD, but the figures are heavily in favour of the lottery. In over 13 years since MCD appeared, there have been only 200 deaths or so WORLDWIDE from it, with just under 170 in the UK.

Hopefully, we will both be contributing to this newsgroup in 25 years time or so. One of us will have been proved wrong. It won't be me.

[nmm1]

Oh, really? Do you have any evidence that this is anything more than a recording artifact? Back in the 1960s, most people didn't call a doctor for mere D&V, whereas they do now. Related to this, there has been a HUGE increase in the number of people who are seriously infirm, because modern medical aid prevents them dying from other causes.

A secondary effect, which particularly affects the serious incidents, is that the population has much less immunity now than it did then, because it has not had the exposure. It isn't clear how much that affects the statistics.

Regards, Nick Maclaren.

[RJBL]

Nick

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

No evidence that it is any more than a recording artifact at all, of course.

As I infer that you know well already public health and epidemiological data is bedevilled by recording artifacts; changes in notifiability criteria; changes in clinical diagnostic fashions and changes in the availability of experimental subjects to clinical examination. The recorded data do, indeed, show a very large increase in the apparent incidence of the minor enteric illnesses since the 1960s; as was predicted by Betty Hobbs all those years ago when the home food freezer first entered the consumer market in volume and home freezing preservation became fashionable.

I guess that most patients still don't consult their GP when hit by a simple D&V bug. Typically for the first 24hrs because they cannot, phyically, get to the Clinic and thereafter because they feel, obviously, sufficiently recovered not to need further treatment. I surmise that the public records may show that the increase has been in cases of illness perceived to be 'severe' rather than 'trivial'.

The original point was that gardeners would be prudent to be aware of the potential bacteriological hazards of the organic gardening fashion. It appears to be true, from the WHO published data, that those societies which practice, per force, strictly organic animal and human faecal soil fertilisation suffer high incidences of the enteric illnesses. The possible exception being China - where food is invariably cooked, and at high temperatures, and drinking water is invariably boiled - and has been for at least the last two thousand years.

Your secondary observation re change in population immune response is intriguing. Many allergies and allergy originated illnesses like asthma do, indeed, appear to have become much more frequent in the last thirty or so. Various estimates suggest that the frequency of childhood asthma has increased between one and two orders of magnitude over that time. It seems to have exactly paralleled the decline of tobacco smoking in the population over the same period, although it would, of course, be heretical to postulate any causal connection.

Returning to the exam question as originally set:-

1. Hot composting of material including horse and cow dung will probably at least pasteurise the material and thus kill off most/all the pathogenic bacteria. It may not destroy any Clostridial spores that have been formed in the compost; these will remain, potentially, dangerous for decades.

1. Cold composting will, almost certainly, not leave the compost safe in respect to the common pathogens. These may well die out in the compost over time.

Takeaway message, still, :-

A. Keep your AT course up to date;

B. Treat any organically raised garden produce as contaminated. Wash it thoroughly and cook it properly.

rjbl

[Sacha]

Oh but this is really well known. When I had a horse I used to take him off to the farrier every so often and there were always a few dogs hanging about in a hopeful sort of way. The farrier flung the parings out the door and the dogs fell on them as if starving! What it is about dogs eating poo I have no idea but one of mine used to eat fox poo. I think a dog breeder once suggested to me that it was something to do with obtaining iron but I have no idea if this is true.

[nmm1]

That is close to trolling. No, I didn't draw that conclusion, and I didn't even imply it. I said that it was much more aggressive than scrapie, which it was. If I recall, the VERY few human cases were a lot more aggressive than the few cases where 'normal' scrapie had been observed in cattle.

Obviously, no conclusion could be drawn, most especially not the one you seem so keen on (i.e. that it was not going to be aggressive in humans). The real experts said that they didn't have a clue.

Because I said what I meant and I meant what I said. I am not going to give a seminar on parameter estimation, but educated guesses are what experts use when they have to make an estimate based on very incomplete data. It's a perfectly valid statistical technique, though a bit beyond most scientists.

I didn't, nor did any expert I read. I could respond to you by:

So why draw only the best conclusions? It's like multiplying all degrees of error together to come up with the best possible outcome.

But a more informed answer is that people who have to take serious decisions use the appropriate analysis (based on game theory), where the risk is the probability of an outcome multiplied by its cost. Only politicians and other ignoramuses rely solely on the probability.

In particular, the cost of the worst plausible scenario combined with a laisser faire attitude (as you are saying should have been adopted) was horrific. The probability of the worst case was low, but the risk of the combination was huge.

No. Because it would mean that only a small proportion of people were infected. Even in the early days, we knew that it was a few years (about 5?) from first symptoms to death. If the first symptoms didn't show for 30+ years in most people, it could mean that the majority of the UK was infected.

Yes, a cure MIGHT be found. But relying on fairy godmothers isn't something that any competent person does.

Aargh! That paper was TEN BLOODY YEARS after the action was taken! Yes, BY THEN, we knew that the nightmare scenario was implausible. But why do you claim that was obvious in 1986-1988?

Given what we know now, if the government had not been pressured into acting until 1998, the problem would be something like ten times worse (not a major issue). But, BASED ON THE INFORMATION AVAILABLE IN 1987, we had NO reason to believe the best plausible scenario over the worst plausible one (or conversely). And, if the latter had been the case, a ten year delay would have been CATASTROPHIC.

Regards, Nick Maclaren.

[Father Haskell]

I'd wonder more about any antibiotics the horses were given, and what effect they'd have on my own soil's beneficial microbes.

[dr-solo]

Somewhere between zone 5 and 6 tucked along the shore of Lake Michigan on the council grounds of the Fox, Mascouten, Potawatomi, and Winnebago

[dr-solo]

As I teach my students "a scientist who is speaking outside his area of expertise is no better than a layman". MCD is in my area of expertise, and MCD lacked several characteristics necessary to become a pandemic.

People tend to think of viruses and bacteria as static or "simple". But microbes spent most of evolution, some 3.5 billion years evolving those genes that survive to this day, those same genes with which all higher life forms are built. Because bacteria and viruses have a single genome (and many viruses are RNA viruses anyway) they mutate at extremely high rates. For this reason there are always small numbers of them that are on the "cutting edge" of infectivity if not ahead of host immunity. They are inherently unstable. MCD is an infectious protein (prion). It does not rapidly mutate and transmission is difficult within species and very difficult outside of species. It is called other names in other animals and the only place it is rampant is in mink because after taking the fur the body of the mink is processed into food for growing mink. The only place it USED to be rampant was in those small populations of humans who ate the brains of family members for ritual reasons. Now that has stopped so has Kuru.

Somewhere between zone 5 and 6 tucked along the shore of Lake Michigan on the council grounds of the Fox, Mascouten, Potawatomi, and Winnebago