Prions may or may not be compostable, I don't believe I have seen definitive studies of the issue.
Have you followed the alternative theory of Mark Purdey on prion disease as a form of manganese poisoning? It is interesting... Sheep have been known to have scrapie for centuries. The actual incidence of TSEs remains very small. Fear of the unknown is not unreasonable, but neither is it very informed. No one has fully documented how TSEs actually work, whether they are transmitted via prion ingestion, or the result of environmental or nutritional insults sustained by the population of affected creatures.... If we carry the argument of 'meat might have prions' to its ultimate conclusion, we could say, let us slaughter all of our fellow vertebrates, as they may carry diseases that might kill some of us. Here are the words of Walt Whitman, written in another time and place: This Compost 1 SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest; I withdraw from the still woods I loved; I will not go now on the pastures to walk; I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea; I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me. O how can it be that the ground does not sicken? How can you be alive, you growths of spring? How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you? Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations; Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day-or perhaps I am deceiv'd; I will run a furrow with my plough-I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it up underneath; I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 2 Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person-Yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noislessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs, The new-born of animals appear-the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk-the lilacs bloom in the door-yards; The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead. What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so amorous after me, That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean forever and forever. That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard-that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease. 3 Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses, It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last Frank Teuton---thinking he will continue to run the 'beau risque' of living with the animals on earth, rather than kill them all out of fear, fear of this or that misunderstood disease (Mad Cow, West Nile virus, etc...) ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2002 1:11 PM Subject: Re: Cats in compost > Leaving aside that permaculture unfortunately often adopts the typical human > way of intervening: Killing indiscriminately and without displaying any > passion, empathy, wisdom or kindness (a bit like spraying pesticides to get > rid of noxious weeds): > Prions are not compostable. And if prion diseases in addition to mad > deer, mad cow exist, who knows what the result of composting meat will be. > Kathy > >
