BSE and Bone Meal Fertilizer
There has been speculation that breathing the bone meal dust or eating vegetables fertilized with bone meal fertilizer could cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Should gardeners be worried?
The bottom line is no. Bone meal fertilizer sold in the U.S. should be free of the agent that causes BSE or Mad Cow Disease and should be safe to use. U.S. manufactures use a heat and solvents in the rendering process so the BSE agent, if present, would be destroyed. Further, bone meal and other animal feeds can no longer be imported from England.
Britain cows became infected with BSE when animal feed that included bone meal that had the BSE prion was given to them. A small number of people that ate the infected beef as became infected. Although this disease was already in English sheep (in sheep the disorder is called Scrapie) for more than 200 years, it was never seen in other animal species until the 1980’s. It’s been suggested that the spread came about due to a change in the way infected sheep carcasses were processed/rendered in the late 1970’s. These carcasses were used for many years to make a high protein feed for cattle and other ruminants. But in the late 1970’s they altered the procedure from using high heat and chemical solvents to only using a heat method which apparently was not effective in destroying the BSE in rendered products.
Answer researched by Holy Wise of CCE of Oneida County.
Lori Bushway | CCE County Programs, Resources