How Safe is Chicken Litter for Land Application as an Organic Fertilizer? A Review
Abstract
Chicken litter application on land as an organic fertilizer is the cheapest and most environmentally safe method of disposing of the volume generated from the rapidly expanding poultry industry worldwide. However, little is known about the safety of chicken litter for land application and general release into the environment. Bridging this knowledge gap is crucial for maximizing the benefits of chicken litter as an organic fertilizer and mitigating negative impacts on human and environmental health. The key safety concerns of chicken litter are its contamination with pathogens, including bacteria, fungi, helminthes, parasitic protozoa, and viruses; antibiotics and antibiotic-resistant genes; growth hormones such as egg and meat boosters; heavy metals; and pesticides. Despite the paucity of literature about chicken litter safety for land application, the existing information was scattered and disjointed in various sources, thus making them not easily accessible and difficult to interpret. We consolidated scattered pieces of information about known contaminants found in chicken litter that are of potential risk to human, animal, and environmental health and how they are spread. This review tested the hypothesis that in its current form, chicken litter does not meet the minimum standards for application as organic fertilizer. The review entails a meta-analysis of technical reports, conference proceedings, peer-reviewed journal articles, and internet texts. Our findings indicate…
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Evidence Hub reads this as a meta-analysis, done in animal, not in people. Its evidence level is 5 of 5 (Very low · case / narrative / animal / in vitro / in silico). Case reports, narrative reviews, and animal, cell or computer-model studies give the weakest evidence for human health.
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