Doing some tangentially related research, I discovered this document today:
National Organic Program Fact Sheet and one part that caught my eye was this:

Sewage sludge? Does the specific prohibition here imply it's acceptable for non-organics? Yes! It's apparently used as a fertilizer and never mind the dioxin, heavy metal, and chlorinated pesticide content. Even the USDA's own research admits the presence of that, and focuses instead on the question of what happens to it after being spread on farmland.

(Edited to have a more descriptive subject.)

Yeah, isn't that real nice! Just like the flouride that is left from fertilizer processing and is sold to our water municipals, otherwise they would have to pay to dispose of it as hazardous waste. Some days I think there are too many words in the english language. They use them to hide all kinds of things.

When I went to college in Tampa, Florida, I drove past trucks that spread sewage right out of the sewer trucks that come to pump your septic tank over large fields near the corner of Tarpon Springs Rd and Rowan Rd. They did this almost daily for a long time. Now, there's a shopping center there, if I remember correctly.

Also along these lines is the fact the big industries were selling their toxic wastes as fertilizer to unsuspecting farmers. At the time they were doing this it was legal according to EPA guidelines. Crops died, animals died and people got sick with heavy metal poisoning. The companies found a loophole in the EPA regulations and felt it was cheaper for them to sell the toxic wastes as fertilizer than the only other alternative they had. The only other alternative they had to dispose of their toxic wastes was to store them in a Superfund Toxic Waste Dump.

See Duff Wilson's award winning investigative journalism articles, "Fear in The Fields, Parts I and II." I"ll link it for you.

http://www.bioethicscourse.info/onlinetextsite/fearinfields.html

Duff Wilson also has written a very good book expanding on this practice. It's called, "Fateful Harvest."

Sometimes, the more I learn, the more frightened I become!

SomdaySoon