Is it true that organically-grown fruits and vegetables use animal manure and inogarnically-grown ones do not? And does it make organic foods are more likely to contain Salmonella or E.coli? Are the sources of the tomatoes with Salmonella found lately organic or inorganic? Please give me links to reliable and factual articles about this issue (news, cdc, fda, etc.), not just skeptical, opinionated websites. Thank you.
Comments
To date, the CDC has not found a tomato with salmonella, so blaming organic farms is premature.
The E coli and Salmonella do not last long outside the animal that produced the manure … most previous contamination has come from fecal contamination in the meatpacking plants (carcass to carcass), or contaminated water used in vegetable processing … downstream of a dairy farm, for example. The spinach last year was probably from wild animal feces in the fields.
Fertilizing with old manure isn’t likely to contaminate vegetables.
All farms use animal manure, conventional and organic and as the price of fertilizer goes up you will see a lot more conventional farms that did not use much manure in the past using more and more.
the big difference is on organic farms the use of raw manure is strictly regulated and it is not at all regulated on conventional farms. organic farms are not allowed to use raw manure within 6 months of harvest and most manure used is composted meaning it has been heated to 130F over a period of months and that kills most pathogens found in manure (among other things).
Another big difference is traceability. organic farms have to keep records of what goes into and out of each field. Coventional farms do not so you should never see a problem such as with spinach or salmonella tomatoes that have no identified source. If this had happened with a certified organic farm the authorities would have know exactly what farm and where on that farm the bad vegetables came from. but since organic farms have much stricter regulations as to what fertilizers you simply will not see nearly as many problems plaguing industrial conventional agriculture and when they do arise they will be quickly and easily traced back to the exact spot.
To date the salmonella tomatoes are not from organic farms and the FDA/USDA has no really idea where they came from-maybe Mexico, maybe the SE US. But with no required paper trail this mystery may never be solved. same with the spinach from 2007. There has never been a definitive answer as to what caused the contamination, though because part of the farm was certified organic and the rest transitioning to organic they knew exactly where the spinach came from because of the records required for organic certification that farms transitioning to organic must keep
