Re: Composting manure

"diddy" <diddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
in thread news:CY1qh.428$u8.233@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
"0tterbot"

you are, of course, aware that soil contains a great many things
you
probably wouldn't want to eat in large quantities, e-coli being
just
one of them.

e-coli tainted food doesn't get that way during the _growing_
process,
fertilisers or no. otherwise we'd be eating all sorts!!
kylie

Actually, in the case of the spinach it did. The fertilizer was
overapplied
and the E-Coli was IN the spinach and didn't wash off.

I was fascinated by this claim as I've never heard of any claim that
E. coli could actually be INSIDE a plant and I've gardened and been an
avid reader of all things gardening for more years than I care to
remember.

E. coli is a normal resident of the gut flora of mammals, and, since
vegetable don't have guts then how could it be possible for E.coli to
be found IN a vegetable???? It may be ON a vegetable but IN
it??????????? I thought this was such a truly weird claim that I just
had to do some googling.

I checked a lot of US sites including the CDC (sloppy writers - why is
the art of clear, unambiguous writing so rare these days!) that site
mentions e. coli in "bagged spinach" which of course is not the same
as "in the spinach". It implies a contamination of the bagged product
with E. coli. Later mention is made of how E. coli has previously
been a problem on lettuce but it goes on to mention that washed
lettuce, where the bag records that it is washed, would be OK. No
help at the CDC site, so I moved on.

The best sirte I could find was this one:
http://www.dmaonline.org/fppublic/connect73.html
Where the nearest comment to e. coli actually being "in the spinach",
is as follows:
Quote, "the FDA issued an advisory warning consumers throughout the
country not to eat any bagged spinach products. Frozen and canned
spinach were not affected by the advisory, because these products
receive processing treatment that would destroy bacteria. FDA
officials also noted that washing spinach would not be an effective
step in making it safe, because bacteria could get inside the leaves."
end quote.

This does not sound like the E. coli was "in the spinach" but more
like a case of contamination of E. coli "on the spinach" or "in the
bag of spinach".

From there I decided to do some more research on the particular strain
of E. coli, viz. 0157:H7.

I found this site:
http://people.ku.edu/~jbrown/ecoli.html
which discusses E. coli in general and the 0157:H7 strain in
particular. It concentrates on the appearance of this strain of E.
coli in meat - ground beef in particular and recalls from ground beef
contamination in the US.

Quote "Unless there is a cut in the meat, the meat below the surface
is normally sterile (unless there is some intracellular organism
present). However, whether or not some intracellular bug is around,
the outside surfaces of all meat will have bacteria present - so - if
some meat happens to be contaminated with the rare E.coli strain,
O157:H7, it will be on the surface of the meat, and not down inside
the fibers of the meat. However, as soon as the meat is cut with a
knife or punctured with a fork, the knife blade or fork tine will
carry the bacterial cells down into the cut or puncture - usually,
such a situation is relatively safe because we cook the meat -
certainly we cook the surface of the meat. Remember though, bacteria
are _really_ small, so even a tiny, pretty much invisible cut in the
meat could introduce bacteria down inside. In the case of E.coli
O157:H7, the total number of bacteria required for infection appears
to be about 10 - that's right, only 10 bacterial cells! Therefore, it
is always safest to cook _all_ meat at least until the juices of the
meat run absolutely clear - not pink - clear. " end quote.

I'm satisfied that any claim that the E. coli was IN the spinach is
not true.








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