My father was in Japan just after the war and said that a common story among the occupying G.I.s was that they would sell the crap from the latrines to the farmers. Then they started telling the farmers that the crap came from officer’s latrines. Since officers ate better, their crap was worth more.
Any feces (properly composted) makes perfectly good fertilizer. I would not be surprised to find the composting part being given short shrift in some places. However they are not the only folks to use an unsafe fertilizer. We use Ammonium Nitrate. Think West, Texas. Why aren’t we all dead?
Actually, they seem to be. There are restaurants all over the place serving big ol’ salads. Pizza Hut is one of them–and it’s considered a primo place to take a date! In the same building as the Pizza Hut in this burg is a restaurant called FruityMix (yes, spelled that way) which has quite the variety of salads on offer.
“Why aren’t those people all dead?” assumes that transmission of diseases through fecal contamination is 100% fatal. Obviously this is not the case, but enteric pathogens entering the water supply are causing plenty of trouble regardless. “Just heat and eat” doesn’t seem to be working, likely in part because some bacterial toxins are highly heat-stable.
And even if bugs don’t get into the food, using untreated manure in raising meat for sale may cause problems due to all the antibiotics employed to keep the livestock from getting sick. Here’s a stomach-turner for those who eat seafood imported from Asia.
I think a larger concern is the use of pesticides. To take care of this, they wash and peel everything, which also handles fertilizer. Also - don’t they stop fertilizing before harvest?
You can get salads in China, but they are specialty items found in pricey ethnic restaurants in urban centers. It’s much like sushi was not long ago in the states. I’ve certainly never heard of being offered a salad in a Chinese home. Maybe some young hip couples might do it, but it’s not a normal thing.
Veggies can be sanitized by soaking in bleach water. I’d make my own salads that way on occasion. But I wouldn’t trust many restaurants to go through the time consuming process, and would be wary of ordering salads anywhere.
The basic facts are that re-use of human waste as fertiliser is perfectly fine as long as it is properly composted (for a few years).
The benefits are:
No waste, why flush and pay to transport nutrients 100s of miles when you can recycle them.
You know exactly what went into it. If you buy traditional fertiliser you can never be sure what feed and medication has been consumed by the livestock. If someone lived a wholesome vegetarian lifestyle and didn’t use any drugs or medicine (or disposed of waste produced whilst on medication) then the fertiliser would be 100% local and natural.
If I had a self sufficient setup I would definitely get a dry compositing toilet and have large compost heaps.
in a few years the nutrient value of shit will be gone.
concentrated fresh shit from animals may be unsuitable because of too much nutrients.
fresh shit from animals may carry diseases from those animals and should not come in contact with plants to be harvested soon. vegetable matter that may have come in contact with shit needs to be washed before consumption.
In some parts of China, yes, you can eat salad-like dishes. We ate tons of cold chili cucumbers, and lots of raw tomatoes with sugar. In most cold dishes, the food is pickled of quick picked, but now and then there is an exception.
There are sushi restaurants. Some French places serve tuna tartare. In some regions, Native American dishes with raw fish are common. Ceviche is easy to get, especially in the Southwest.
Despite this, I really don’t think you could say Americans eat a lot of raw fish.
