Food Safety Using Animal Power

[dominiquer60]

I have always been a tractor farmer and I have tried to be careful to keep the tractor out of the cattle yard just before driving it into the vegetable field, and to wash the loader bucket when needed. I do animal chores in the morning and at least wash my hands before working with edible plants, and on Fridays after morning chores I will often change out of or cover my chore closes before I start the harvest for our weekend markets. I don’t believe that everything should be sterile, but after a couple micro biology classes, I know that the more manure that I can keep out of the crops, the less risk there is to my customers.

Now I have a team and a nice riding cultivator that I am eager to try out and use on a regular basis when possible. So begins the contradiction, after all my efforts to keep manure out of the field, now I want to walk the manure makers right through the crops. I am sure that in the grand scheme of things it won’t matter at all, but know that I will be increasing the risk of unwanted filth on my edible crops.

How do those of you using animals to grow retail vegetable crops deal with the slight risk of the animals creating food safety problems?

Erika

[mitchmaine]

i think about it like you do, erika, but doesn’t it seem ironic that the unwanted filth is in fact plant food. organic plant food we need to successfully grow crops. it might be a sign of our culture to worry about this issue, when the e-coli problems in huge processing plants comes from polluted wash water. polluted how? and the finger is pointed, seemingly, to punish the small producer. we have to jump through the same hoops as the big guys, and that seems fair, until you start to explore the costs, and if you are as synical as i, we usually get to the conspiracy theory pretty fast. bummer. seriously, my family has always grown their own food on composted manure and some on green manure with no trouble. we have made cider from apple drops forever and no one in our group ever got ill from it. i just don’t get it sometimes. mitch

[Tim Harrigan]

I don’t do vegetables but it seems like most growers are not interested in integrating livestock and veges. I know some that use manure in the cropping system, but there are state guidelines for the time lag between manure application and planting. I don’t think the issue of draft animals is addressed directly but I might be wrong. In many crops there would at least be a lag between the last cultivation and harvest. It’s really a risk based issue. I would be more concerned about the risk from irrigation with a contaminated surface water supply than about incidental contact from the animals in the field. Leafy veges like spinach or lettuce would cause more concern because of their ability to create a moist and cool environment protected from UV light and difficulty in washing. With draft animals it would seem like you might need a perfect storm of recent contamination, pathogenic organisms that transmit disease with a low infectious dose and consumption by susceptible individuals such as immune compromised, young or old. It is good that you are attentive to the possibility.

I know a young lady that got crypto from handling calves. Not a happy story.

[dominiquer60]

It is ironic that deposits of untimely organic matter are indeed good for the soil and crops, and as far as I am concerned my immune system. You can’t become immune to something if you are never exposed to it. Perhaps someday it will be a good thing to seed food with imperfections so that peoples immune systems will thrive like our own. In the mean time I would hate to be the first small farm to make national news over some customer with a compromised immune system being negatively impacted by my sustainable practices.

When the 2006 spinach outbreak occurred, the farm that I worked for and many others like in the area, had increased salad greens and spinach sales. A couple months ago when the egg crisis hit, again our egg sales soared as people shied away from grocery store eggs. One customer asked, “are these eggs guaranteed salmonella free?” I wanted to tell him that there are no guarantees in life, but instead I went with, “we have never had a problem in 70 years.” He seemed quite happy with that answer, even though I didn’t actually answer his question at all, so he purchased our eggs.

I feel like if I start using my animals more in the field that I should inform my customers with a sign, “vegetables are guaranteed to have been exposed to farm life, side effects may be a strengthened immune system.” 🙂

[Andy Carson]

I think this is an important thing to think about, even though I think it is very unlikely that these “untimely deposits” will cause disease… I say unlikely because I think the odds that many sizable pieces of manure will end up on a veggie (instead of between the rows) seems small. Further, it seems likely that the manure would be noticed by the farmer and even more likely that the comsumer would also not notice it, and the same comsumer would not wash thier food. Also, it’s probably unlikely that that particular small piece of manure is going to cause disease anyway (either because of particulary pathogenic bacteria or because of a particularly compromised host). I am not aware that this manure issue was a big problem historically when nearly all food was grown with animals (although many cases of food poisoning went unreported then). Still, there is some risk, and if there are simple things that can be done to mitigate the risk, than it would be good. This topic does seem to be on the mind of at least some people. I heard a couple questions/comments about this at the cultivation workshop at NEAPFD. I plan to be able to either justify why the manure issue is not important for the particular crops I am growing (crops not laying on the ground, are encased in a protective cover/shell which is removed, and/or are cooked). For crops that might be riskier, it might be a nice thing to be able to say that “the last cultivation is done X days before harvest” or “all cultivations done after x date are done with a manure bag to prevent contamination” or something else like that. I think I would want to be able to explain that I am aware of the risks and have taken the steps that can be taken to minimize then taking into account “the nature of the beast.” By the way, do they make manure bags for oxen? Cleaning that bag would not be my favorite chore…

Some might say that the food could have fecal contamination too small too see, and while this is theoretically true, that’s not how my horse does it! You have a big chunk (very noticable) or you have nothing as all. I think this whole “too small too see” issue becomes important when there is some sort of liquid manure or other mechanism that could mix manure and crop together…

[near horse]

I think the issue we’re realy talking about, and Erika touched on it, is liability. When you consider all the food-borne illness outbreaks in this country, by far and away the majority are from operations that are processing too much material at a time to allow any semblence of good quality control.

BTW – Has anyone ever heard of documented human foodborne illness from fresh veg contminated with horse manure? I never have. And, although I hate to admit it, over the years, I’ve had plenty of poop “find” its way into my mouth. 😮 Can’t remember getting sick from any of it. Poop happens.

The recent Salmonella egg contamination not withstanding, a lot of the foodborne illness problems come from “improper handling” on the part of the consumer. That is most certainly the truth with meat. So, IMHO – even if there was some pathogenic bacteria on lettuce, if the consumer washed the lettuce once before eating it, I can’t imagine that it could have more CFU’s (I’m thinking E. coli Colony Forming Units) than what we currently allow in our drinking water.

Erika – if the risk of contamination from your animals manure is that great (and I don’t believe for a moment that it is), then realistically, you would need to keep any critters, birds included, from either getting in the cattle lot or getting in wherever your veg is. And you can’t allow visitors on the farm w/o proper attire (booties etc). Sounds stupid right? Except that one of the faculty at the local university, a veterinarian no less, believes that the university dairy needs to ban any outreach/tours etc because, and I have to quote him on this – “We all know that kids lick their shoes.”:confused: So those kids could be exposing themselves to dangerous pathogens. WOW. This demonstrates the level of paranoia and misinformation about “safe food”.

Sorry if I got off the topic but IMNSHO – because of what we’ve allowed to happen to the food system in the US (becoming a corporate megalopoly), small farmers now have to be concerned about litigation from a misinformed public. Realistically, I don’t see horse manure as anything to be concerned about.

[mitchmaine]

hey geoff, anyone whoever milked cows in the spring and had to deal with wet cowtails knows poop can get in your mouth and you will survive it. my dad used to pick up soil in our garden and taste it for “sweetness” and he lived to a ripe old age. i haven’t developed a taste for it yet, but i’m not as afraid of shit as some would worry you to be. penny and i certify some of our crops. we grow organically anyway, but it is about recordkeeping. we have been asked gently to bag our horses and collect the waste while we till. manure has to be composted 120 days before harvest. i keep wanting to ask about the deer and coons who visit our feilds regularly. but thats another day. hey, i liked and have heard your frozen logger song. not just a common bum, but a special kind of a bum, thats what i always wanted to be. its a beauty. mitch

[bendube]

Hi all,
I’d like to bump this thread up with a question more specific than food safety: Organic Certification.

Are there any certified organic growers on the forum who can talk about how they deal with “raw manure” requirements when growing market vegetables with draft animals? Are bags a 100% necessity, or are there other ways around it?

Thanks,
Ben

[CharlyBonifaz]

not that I recommend manure spread over salad before it is cut, BUT:
we don’t live in a sterile environment! and by the way we can’t either…
at least as important as what you consider now is the fact, what you do with your vegetables after harvesting them?
will they be on the road for days?
will they be wrapped in plastic for days?
how high is the humidity in the vegetables immediate environment?
temperature?
will they be eaten raw or boiled/fried/baked…
all factors can contribute to a problem or solve it and will differ with the various vegetables

[Claddagh Farms]

Ben, thanks for bumping this thread. I was thinking about this topic the other day. I haven’t had a chance to ask my friends at MOFGA what they think/do yet either.

I am not only transitioning to Certified Organic this year–have always been, but am making it formal now on a new farm–this will be the first year I attempt to cultivate every aspect of our crops with horses….

I have been made aware of the 120 day rule for manure…never minded it much before and nothing came of it. I dumped a ton of rabbit manure on the garden last year, in between rows, as I cultivated it and BAM everything took off right up til harvest. It was mid-season. No one got sick, no manure reached the mature plants and what might have was washed away by rain, sun & processing.

I was sort of figuring this year, with the team, on letting it ride. I will be spreading composted manure before planting. Anything the horses drop is negligible then. Planting and first 2 cultivations, while the plants are small, are still 3-4 months from harvest. Anything dropped mid-summer could have the spot flagged in the row and the vegetables kept for personal use. Both my boys are used to being bagged as former cart & carriage horses, but what a bother.

The other option is working on getting the horses to not shit while in the row. I’m having some luck with my lead boy, telling him to hold it for a few more feet–I hate setting a choker he’s just crapped and dragged through. Sawing a log on the mill with frozen horse shit on it isn’t much fun either….. He’s learning–or re-learning–that he can crap while at rest, not while pulling. We’ve got a long way to go, and it really helps having a small buddy to kiss his nose and feed him a cookie when he does the right thing, while I’m paying attention to lines, log placement and everything else…. Horses are very trainable, and if a cow can learn not to crap in the stanchion while being milked–startle them once and they’ll hold it for a half-hour longer–then a horse should easily be able to learn when it’s acceptable to go or not.

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