I am wondering what everyone else thinks.

"This finding is incongruous with the image of compost as a soil-building, crop-enhancing agent."

Not to my mind.

How do you know your own, home produced compost is pathogen free? Even "porperly" composted material?

Feijoas, EPA 503 initially applied to composting sewage sludge. The study pertains to "market-ready, non-sludge recycled organic matter composts".

I would say it is absolutely certain. CAFOs have the largest amount of manure in a small area, easy to collect with large equipment, and they need to get rid of it. I've seen CAFOs that had cattle standing on manure three and four feet high in corrals. It would not be cost-effective for composting operations to collect from any other source.

Also, the presence of E. coli O157:H7 is a good indicator. O157:H7 basically shows up only in CAFOs, as they are high-density operations, and fed mainly cheap corn that has been subsidized by the taxpayers. Those are the two main criteria for O157:H7.

Grass-fed cattle, or those grass-fed and grain-finished in relatively small operations (non-CAFO) are not known for O157:H7, never have been.

Also, in the more natural grass-fed cattle operations, the manure is tromped into the pasture soil, and it would never be cost-effective to send people out with shovels to collect it. Grass-fed operations probably consider it a valuable commodity and wouldn't let it off their property, anyway.

The types of commercial composting operations that are mentioned in the article get their ingredients from waste products that they are desperate to get rid of, because they have so much. Sometimes it is the CAFOs themselves that are collecting, turning and producing the compost. They have a waste product they want to sell to you, good or bad, as long as you pay the money. It's like sewage sludge sold as fertilizer, complete with heavy metals, industrial chemicals, and human medication residues.

"I'm generally not too fussy about what I put in my compost, but I'd start getting jumpy about growing antibiotic-resistant, mutated bacteria in my compost."

You are obviously a person who thinks for himself, and I wholeheartedly agree.

Sue

Although the difference was not significant, composts listing manure were generally lower in fecal coliform count than those not listing manure.

Anyone have any ideas why that would be so?

Does the 503 rule have mandatory listing of ingredients?

By my limited understanding, fecal coliform can arise from plant material, though I am unclear whether contaminated water is involved.

"Presence of fecal coliforms in water may not be directly harmful, and does not necessarily indicate the presence of feces."