Roy Blunt Says Manure Isn't Toxic
Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-K Street) has filed legislation declaring that manure is not toxic.
According to Blunt's press release:
Nuclear waste is a toxic substance, manure is not. Heavy metals are a toxic substance, manure is not.
That might be true for the amounts of manure produced on a mom and pop hog or poultry farm, but surely Blunt understands the difference when you are talking about the outputs of the industrial livestock operations.
According to RedOrbit, a science and technology news service:
As of 2002, poultry feeding operations were estimated to produce an
amount of phosphorous equivalent to a population of 10.7 million
people, being dumped into the Illinois River watershed, said Hunter-
Burch. The waste also contains nitrogen, arsenic, zinc, copper,
hormones and antibiotics, which are not naturally occurring substances.They are in the waste as a direct result of an industry's
addition of phosphorus, arsenic, copper and zinc to poultry feed, said
Hunter-Burch. While CERCLA exempts the normal application of
fertilizer, it does not exempt widespread surface disposal, nor the
resulting release of the hazardous substances.
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that Blunt thinks phosphorus, arsenic, copper and zinc aren't hazardous, after all, he lives with a woman who makes her living telling people that cigarettes aren't bad for you either.
Perhaps Blunt would be willing to be subjected to a scientific experiment to determine if drinking water that is saturated with manure laden with those chemicals is bad for humans or not.
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There are some great comments on this story
over at Democraticunderground:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&add...
organic farming operation
I screwed my organic certification by spreading manure from our cattle, he has no idea what he is talking about. He needs to read the FDA regulations on organic - but then why be informed when you can just be bought?
Is Blunt trying to rewrite the OSHA Manual?
Manure, by OSHA definitions, never was toxic, it is a biohazard. It is when it is present in certain concentrations that the materials in it become toxic as defined by lethal dose in lab rats. A biohazard is only as hazardous as the toxic potential of its ingredients. Hence, one cow pie is not toxic; a tank full of liquid cow sludge spilled on some poor soul standing next to it is.
Toxicity is defined in terms of a biologic effect (measured with dose needed to produce dead rats.) That is already strictly defined in OSHA regs. Maybe he should just get someone to read the OSHA manual for him.
Don't be silly.....
Why would he want to go to all the bother of actually gathering facts? It's far easier for him to just do what the special interests tell him to do.
Common Sense
What he is saying is that manure should not be considered as
"A pig, in a cage, on antibiotics"hazardous as nuclear waste. I am sure most farmers don't want the federal
hazmat teams coming to their farms every time they fertilize their fields. This is being blown out of proportion.
No, what he is saying....
Is that no matter how much waste the industrial livestock operations produce and allow to run off into the watershed, there should be no remedy. If it's being blown out of proportion, would you like a gallon of the runoff for your drinking water for today?