Sydneysiders: if they aren’t taking photos of themselves sucking back wang flavoured libations, then they’re almost certainly taking photos of their green smoothies and salads – healthy eating options a parliamentary inquiry has today found are “almost certainly” seasoned with organic human effluent.
According to a PSA report on The ABC and in today’s Sydney Morning Herald, fruit and vegetables grown in NSW are being cultivated with fecund human waste because some farmers think that crap makes for an A+ fertiliser. Health authorities are now finding it necessary to remind an evidently lax public to wash everything they put in their mouths – including your hands, please – as affected crops are “almost certainly being sold to consumers.”
The Inquiry into the Management of Domestic Waste [Not Want Not] Water has been told that of the 130 intensive market gardens providing fruits and vegetables to certain areas of Sydney, at least two thirds had failing septic systems. The apparently sentient sewage from the faulty tanks then breaches buffer zones and makes its way from paddock to plate to your palette. Apparently “widespread use of effluent hoses conveying wastewater to crops” is another technique some farmers are employing at community vegetable gardens these days.
The report continues that “many hundreds of people” could potentially be affected, especially those prone to consuming raw fruit and vegetables at a rate so rapid that washing them is out of the question. Otherwise “most farmers” are doing the right thing and no one has contracted listeria just yet, so fingers crossed.
There’s still no evidence to suggest that people who take photos of their #cleaneating habits are at greater risk; though those people are already full of shit regardless.
