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Nothing You Eat Is All-the-Way Vegan
I tell you this to encourage, not discourage
There is a growing movement of vegan and veganic (vegan + organic) farmers throughout the world, who are both concerned about the welfare of non-human animals, and understand that the standard practice of using animal by-products as soil amendments is actually not benefitting soil health, productivity, and their bottom-line.
Unfortunately, there are too few of us currently, which means that the fruit and veg you’re buying at the market or grocery store, especially if organic, is grown using the “wastes” from an industry that is so horrific it’s unthinkable that it still exists.
Death by fertilizer
Many animal agriculture by-products are used in farming and gardening, much more than the manure that comes to mind for most people. Fish emulsion, feather meal, and a host of other, equally horrific “amendments” are added to soil as fertilizer.
If you’ve gone to the trouble of eating organic foods, you are even more likely to have had your food grown with animal by-products. This is because things like bone meal and blood meal can be certified for organic use, but fossil fuel based fertilizers cannot.
The five most common of these by-products are outlined below, but there are others, like bat guano and worm castings, which you will find almost universally used as the fertilizer in potting soil.
If you’d prefer not to read about animal by-products, skip the quote.
Bone meal is a mixture of finely and coarsely ground animal bones and slaughter-house waste products. As a slow-release fertilizer, bone meal is primarily used as a source of phosphorus and protein.
Blood meal is a dry, inert powder made from blood used as a high-nitrogen organic fertilizer and a high protein animal feed. It is one of the highest non-synthetic sources of nitrogen. It usually comes from cattle or hogs as a slaughterhouse by-product.
Fish emulsion is a fertilizer emulsion that is produced from the fluid remains of fish processed for fish oil and fish meal industrially.
Feather meal is a byproduct of processing poultry; it is made from poultry feathers by…
