Germs, bacteria are everywhere... which is the primary reason why we wash and cook our food.

Unless you are planning to eat your compost, I wouldn't worry about it.

A perfectly fine question to ask, but you are worrying about nothing. Compost is SUPPOSED to rot. Your stuff was stinky because it was sealed in a plastic bag, and it will reequilibrate in air. Botulism, for one thing, is strictly anaerobic and can't survive in an aerobic compost pile.

There are approx. 10 to 100-million microbes per GRAM of soil, representing thousands of varieties. Somehow, we survive.

And you are mistaken about the temperatures compost needs to achieve to destroy both plant and human disease pathogens. It only requires three days at 135F to kill off disease pathogens....and that's not very difficult to achieve if you have active and frequently turned pile.

There are three things you can do to "sterilize" your compost. First, you can hot compost, which can kill pathogens, but it is not a guaranteed process. Second, you can even resort to baking or microwaving your compost, not something I would recommend, and kinda defeats the whole point of compost if you're just gonna killed all the beneficial bacteria as well. Third is a suggestion from the humanure manual, and that is to let the compost age for at least 1-2 years, the longer the better. Supposedly the pathogens get outcompeted by the billions of other good bacteria which take up residence

Botulin toxin, as far as a compost heap is concerned, is just another protein. There are bacteria and fungi in there that can break it down to amino acids.

Don't worry about it.

Agreed and if you spend to much time reading the harvest forum it will scare the bejeus out of you

this forum too.
I thought I may have poisoned the village below me from composting a loaf of moldy bread,
scared me to death for a few seconds.
thank goodness it was all just someones "personal preference gone wild".
SCARED THE @#$#OUT OF ME THOUGH.
p.s.
it's o.k. to compost moldy food.
Laura

Botulism generally develops in an anerobic condtion, ie. that closed jar of canned vegetables, not in the compost pile unless the compost is in a container that really excludes air.

Thanks for the replies. It's kinda what I thought, but you get to thinking, what if,and next thing you know your worried about poisoning the village below. LOL The 240 degrees was the temp. for processing food, not the compost pile which I understand needs to get to about 140 - 160, ideally. Yeah, the Harvest forum can kinda scare you if you read too much, but they are trying to teach safety and are a big help for those who haven't done much food preserving. I will relax now and try to get my waste out so it can decompose naturally vs. rotting. Thanks again.

I am new to this forum but have been composting for years; have three large bins going right now! Which is almost kinda funny since I had to go buy some bagged stuff because none of the three are ready yet! I am very excited to read the stuff on here!

I am no expert at all - but maybe the thing that is of concern is not botulism but e-coli? Which would be something that would be somewhat of risk if using manure? Of course, she didn't mention using manure, just a worry about rotting veggies but e-coli is the only pathogen that comes to my mind (I'm trying in vain to remember the last book on composting I read). This book warned against using manure for "manure tea" because of the risk of e-coli. It said to use only thoroughly composted compost to brew the stuff.

I do use manure in my compost since I have horses but no longer add any poo to my brew :)

Lynn

If manures are used then things like E-Coli, Salmonella, Listeria and a couple of other potential diseases might be of concern, but if you properpy compost that manure (human or animal) even those would not be of major concern. The concern would be putting uncomposted manure on your garden.

texaslynn -
The E coli that is a pathogen can't compete with the soil bacteria and fungi very well. As long as you don't spray fresh manure tea onto the lettuce, you will be OK.

There are other varieties that are normal inhabitants of digestive tracts of mammals - they are not often pathogenic.