Rebekah -
Where exactly did you point out that the majority of composting facilities are handling yard waste, food waste, and any inputs besides sewage sludge? Sorry if I missed it, but the pervasive tone throughout the article does a disservice to the USCC to paint it as the sewage sludge industry trade group. While that serves your purpose - which is clearly NOT to inform, but rather provoke.
I am not in favor of sewage sludge land application and was happy to hear that Kellogg's discontinued the inclusion of sewage sludge in any of their products last year. You may want to do some fact-checking prior to publishing your "article". That is not my responsibility as a reader.
I am not suggesting that there is not substantial risk from the use of sewage sludge, however, when properly composted, that risk is significantly reduced or eliminated.
Nowhere on your wiki site did I find any studies identifying these constituents of concern in composted material, only about Type A and Type B sludge.
Like Fox News, you seem to purport that you have been "fair and balanced", which is clearly not the case.
On a positive note, many thanks are due to the hundreds of composters (who are sewage sludge free)participating in this program that you have besmirched so dismissively.
Keep in mind that the subject is limited to a certain dollar amount...if one person wants to spend their allotment on organic foods, but get less over all, that should be their choice to avoid pesticides, growth hormones and GMOs. Also, many farmers markets are accepting food stamps: they products are often cheaper than grocery stores yet still organic. Also: how about we stop subsiding the meat, dairy and cheap oil/fructose industries? They get huge allottments of our tax dollars already, SNAP should not force people to give these industries even more governemtn dollars.
"Born Skeptic,"
Nothing in the article suggested that there are not also USCC members that do not handle sewage sludge. Nothing in the article suggested that using real compost made from clean organic materials is not an excellent idea in community gardens and elsewhere.
What makes you say that Kellogg Garden Products does not use sewage sludge in its products? Do you work for Kellogg? If so, I would love to speak with you about it. If it no longer does, that is excellent news. Its own website previously confirmed its use, and a case study by a third party points out that Kellogg's brand was built on using sewage sludge in its products: https://www.sourcewatch.org/images/4/43/KelloggBrandcasestudy.pdf.
You use the words "potential" and "allegedly" to suggest that there is little or no risk for sewage sludge to contain a host of chemical contaminants. The EPA's testing and regulation of sewage sludge products is problematic at best, but even the EPA's Targeted National Sewage Sludge Survey in 2009 concluded that ALL sewage sludge contains toxic and hazardous materials, including large numbers of endocrine disruptors: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/TNSSS.
CMD has been reporting on sewage sludge for many years, and each PRWatch article cannot contain the decades of scientific research showing the problems with its application to soil, but many of those studies can be found on our sister wiki site, SourceWatch, here: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Scientific_Studies_of_Sewage_Sludge.
Looking forward to continuing the conversation,
Rebekah Wilce
I believe that no matter what a person/family decides to buy with their food stamp benefits they should be allowed to choose. The reality of the situation is, if they choose options that are too expensive, they are going to run out of food stamps before they get more. This will teach families to be more responsible in budgeting and making wiser choices about the foods they are buying. To put foods on a banned list is irrational and takes away people's freedom to choose.
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This is clearly a bid by major corporations to squelch small organic farmers in favor of their pesticide-laden, GMO crap.
When I was on food stamps I did see people who abused it. A woman ahead of me in line once bought 20 cans of baked beans and gobs of candy. I don't know how she was still alive eating like that. Meanwhile I was buying seeds so I could grow my own food, organic milk, organic fruits and vegetables, and trying to stay healthy on a shoestring. I bought at Trader Joes a bit and they never made me feel bad. I bought ice cream a few times and some salads kits when I was out and about for lunch.
There are some people who really should be making wiser choices about what thy eat. An educational program would be helpful for many, but I'm guessing that would be sponsored by corporate farming conglomerates and companies like Nestle who convinced women that formula was better than brat milk for their babies. It was the future made possible by science!
Many people are on Food Stamps because they have other disabilities and not just that they are lazy. I'd like to challenge any of you to try to live on the meager $200 a month they give you for food as a single person with a maximum benefit. Unless you are buying staple foods and making everything from scratch it can barely be done. Who cooks from scratch anymore? Any of you? I didn't think so. Many stores used to have a few aisles of staples 50 years ago, now you can barely find that.
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