Worms work on Poo
December 22nd 2007 04:12
Some time ago I wrote about the worm farm I visited in Norfolk, England. At that time raising worms was one of several options I was considering in case I didn’t get a job when I went back home. Besides harvesting worms for compost, and anglers, the people at Anglian Worms sold special double shelf trays in which worms got to work on dog poo.
I hadn’t heard of anything similar being used for human excrement, not at least in NZ, until the other day when there was a bit of a hoo-hah here about an inventor who’d made a compost toilet. He’d applied to the local council for approval, and to his amazement, one of the staff (who was obviously having a real Political Correctness Day) turned him down until he could prove that the worms wouldn’t be psychologically upset by having to work in human poo.
The story made national news. New Zealanders don’t like people who come up with such nonsense and seemingly get away with it. In the end the inventor triumphed when a vermiculture consultant reported that the worms were breeding well and were in excellent health. (Whether she meant mental or emotional health, we’re not told. We presume it was physical health.)
Vermiculture, for those who don’t know (and obviously my spellchecker is one of them) is a word relating to the life and times of worms rather than vermin, as you might suspect. I guess you could say that Amanda Jennings of Anglian worms is a vermiculturalist. Though I suspect she’d find that was too posh a word to be bothered with.
I hadn’t heard of anything similar being used for human excrement, not at least in NZ, until the other day when there was a bit of a hoo-hah here about an inventor who’d made a compost toilet. He’d applied to the local council for approval, and to his amazement, one of the staff (who was obviously having a real Political Correctness Day) turned him down until he could prove that the worms wouldn’t be psychologically upset by having to work in human poo.
The story made national news. New Zealanders don’t like people who come up with such nonsense and seemingly get away with it. In the end the inventor triumphed when a vermiculture consultant reported that the worms were breeding well and were in excellent health. (Whether she meant mental or emotional health, we’re not told. We presume it was physical health.)
Vermiculture, for those who don’t know (and obviously my spellchecker is one of them) is a word relating to the life and times of worms rather than vermin, as you might suspect. I guess you could say that Amanda Jennings of Anglian worms is a vermiculturalist. Though I suspect she’d find that was too posh a word to be bothered with.
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