So a lot of crops are fertilized with manure, which usually comes from the cattle industry, and to my knowledge, there’s no reliable way to tell what the plant-based foods you’re buying is fertilized with.
Some crops are fertilized with processed sewage sludge and/or food waste, but since most humans still eat meat, would you consider this vegan? Side note, processing of sewage and food waste is often also used to generate electricity, heat, and in some cases the methane is added directly to the municipal natural gas supply, would you consider these services no longer vegan in that case.
Finally, and I guess this is mainly relevant to those who are vegans for environmentalism, but the only real alternative to manure is chemical fertilizers, often made from petroleum, and have their own environmental problems. I guess you could cut out the cow by harvesting hay and putting it in a digester to make fertilizer, but as far as I know, no one currently does this since it would be a lot more expensive than both manure and chemical fertilizer.
What do you make of this? Does it bother you, or are you okay with it, or have you even found alternatives to these problems?
I’m a bit torn on this. On the one hand, it makes livestock keeping more profitable because the manure can be sold or at least disposed without having to pay expensive disposal fees. On the other hand, I think as long as there is animal husbandry, it’s the best to make use of all byproducts. Using the dung doesn’t further harm the animals but can be beneficial for agriculture without doubt.
That said, overfertilization is a huge problem and with the current dimensions of industrial livestock farming, it’s more damaging for the soil rather than being beneficial. It’s often just cheap disposal of the sewage.