Are Animal Manures Organic?

I had an interesting conversation with someone the other night about organic gardening. He maintained that the animal manures we can purchase (eg, cow, sheep, poultry) are not truly organic products because of the hormones and/or antibiotics the animals are fed.

However, most advocates of domestic organic food production seem to use them, as I'm sure do most of us. The person I was talking to said that he considered the only "organic" fertilisers commonly available to home gardeners were fish emulsion, seaweed extract and home-made compost.

Granted, the fish emulsion and seaweed extract probably are "organic", but we know our oceans and waterways are often polluted and are therefore contaminants will most likely be present in the fish and the seaweed. As for compost, how many of us manage to have the only components in our compost fully "organic"? For example, I add shredded paper to mine, which I would almost guarantee is not totally "organic".

Which leads me to wonder about the time it might take for "non-organic" components to break down to the point of being relatively harmless. If this break down does occur within a reasonable period of time, maybe the manures we buy are OK, as they tend to be heat composted.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

love and light
naturewitch

Happiness is . . .

. . . a car boot full of cow and poultry manure and three new fruit trees for my garden.

This morning I popped into Bunnings to get some manure for the garden (I'm using the liquid gold, but I also like manures to build up the soil a bit) and some bolts to put together the swing set frame for the kiwi fruit.

As well as these, I came out with three new fruit trees:

"Preston Prolific" fig - you can never have too many fig trees (confession: I've already got a couple, a Black Genoa and another) - they are so good for fresh figs, dried figs, stuffed figs, fig jam and I'm starting to think about figs in brandy and what about fig wine???

Feijoa (pineapple guava) - been wanting one for ages and there it was and it just screamed out "pick me, pick me!"

"Sensation" pear - these are red pears (a bit redder than the picture, actually) that stay a bit crunchy and are really sweet and juicy - been looking for one for about three years and never found it, but there it was! (mind you, we already have a Williams (double-grafted with a nashi), a Josephine and a Buerre Bosc.

The trouble is - where will I put them? I'm sure I will find a spot (or three), maybe over near the apple trees and the mulberry, but I just couldn't resist. Maybe I'm turning into a fruit-tree-aholic?

Well, that's my retail therapy for a while. To be honest, I generally am not enamoured of shopping and try to only do what is necessary. But it felt good to leave the hardware with my little finds today.

love and light
naturewitch