All Vegans: Do you eat vegetables and fruit ....???!
Answers: that are grown with fertilizer made of animal manure? I was just curious because animal manure contains animal protein which in turn feed the plant which in fact will contain some animal protein. I have recently decided to quit eating red meat, pork...still gonna eat my chicken..but I think maybe slowly I could wean myself off of even that...I don't plan on becoming Vegan...but maybe Vegetarian? I am just not sure yet. But please answer my question about the fertilizer..I am really curious to know the answer.
Uless you grow your own it must be near impossible to know what your fruit and veg are fertilised with.
Cattle slurry ( relatively "new" fertiliser ) is used directly on pasture land. Ms Z is right that it is toxic ( excessive nitrogen ) and acidic if used in large amounts and there are limits to the quantity thats spread to control nitrogen distribution into water courses.
no one has asked the farmers what they with the excess once they reach thier limits. In reality they just spread the lot. Its miraculous how every farm produces just the right amount of manure to meet thier limits for spreading.
This is only really necessary because farmers cannot afford to leave fields idle for seasons like they used to, they have to graze them permanently now.
Cattle fertlizer, blood and bone meal are used on much organic crops in place of chemical growth and inhibitor products.
some organic crops do not use any of these products, they farm less intensively and rely on stubble plough-in and nature to recover the ground.
Human waste is also used as manure in some places. Some countries allow this legally. In the UK it is still quite common, but illegal.
Good luck with the veggie thing, i hope you take to it. Do not beat yourself up over the manure and if it perhaps came from beef cattle. Did you directly contribute to the slaughter of the animal ? No, its not like you bought bone meal is it.
Believe me, farmers do not keep cows just to produce manure to sell. By buying the manure, you are not encouraging them to farm cattle.
Start with the veggie diet, then think about the other aspects of animal products when you can. To remove all animal products from your life instantly is a tough call - hence most people go from meat-eater to veggie, very few go meat-eater to vegan instantly.
well im a veggie but i eat food made with animal manure
Most of the veggies that I buy are local and organic. I haven't done research on the fertilizers, but I do know that corporate farming cow manure is pretty toxic and polluting the water, so I don't know if it is used to fertilize crops.
I am not so worried about that as getting healthy food, Non genetically modified and local.
And not all veggies are grown from manure, when I was growing up, we had a huge garden and didn't use manure as fertilizer...
:) Good luck being veggie, I can honestly it's the best decision that I have ever made. Cutting back on any kind of meat is really great for you....good for you.
Ask the question~ What is a natural order of things? Does Manure contain animal protein..why ? The animal(Cows & Horses) is a Vegan if eating it's normal natural diet. Plant food in plant matter out etc. I say natural becuase if it's a big "farm" industry animal it may be fed many un-natural foods(like dead dogs or ill cows etc.).
Now Chicken manure may have bug matter as they do like their nibbles of live bugs when they can get them.
I organic garden & have taken many classes on the subject. I can't say I know all the answers.
On your food choices you are starting down a good path. Lots of luck & good health.
Before it's used, the waste is allowed to rot - it breaks down into its molecular components. It's all just chemicals - nitrogen, etc. If you use it before this happens, it isn't very efficient, so people wait. All things on the planet are made up of chemicals, and when they rot, they turn basically back into dirt. The same molecules are used over and over to make new things, so what I'm saying is that by the time it gives its nutrients to your plants, it's no longer poop. Animal fertilizer is a good use of a natural resource - if we didn't use it it would just pile up. Ecologically it's very sound, much more so than artificial fertilizers that are manufactured. This is THE organic fertilizer.
Well, using manure if fine, but you it must be *composted* before use. All animal matter will be broken down if allowed to compost first. Same goes for the plant matter. Using uncomposted manure is just not very good for plant growth -- in fact, it can kill less hearty plants.
We got manure from the local farm. Cheap (free), easy to come by (live in agricultural area) and was non-chemical etc. so... just horse poo. It was either that or that crap from the garden centre. We're renting, so we needed an instant garden. If we this were our own land, we'd use a different method -- more along the lines of Masanobu Fukuoka's methods (look him up).
Since then, we have established a very large compost pile from our food and garden and grass waste. Cover crops etc. in the winter keep the soil from vanishing, but usually the plants will eat up all of our compost in the summer months so adding more manure to our heap to compost ahead of time is a good idea.