My personal belief is that George Hahn patented the chitin-enhanced worm compost to prevent a large commercial concern from patenting the process. Give George his due on this. I doubt he will pursue small users from claiming chitin benefits, but by George having the patent, small operations can continue to make statements about the benefits of worm compost.
We need people willing to spend the money to patent things, and then let the rest of us be able to use those processes without fear of reprisal from some larger company. The patent holder does get the commercial right to extoll the process, and we have to recognize that we can't infringe on that commercial right.
Advertising is everything in our current western culture. The claims you make are what will get you in trouble. And be very aware of that when selling compost or tea. No statements about tea will suppress disease. Tea can protect surfaces. Tea can put back organisms on the leaf surface and the plant will then feed the proper organisms and the disease organisms will have nothing to eat. Tea will put the "cats" back onto the plant surfaces, so the "mice" can be reduced to non-pest levels. Read protozoa and nematodes for plant surface "cats", and disease-organisms as "mice". The EPA and USDA don't register cats as biocontrol agents. Dogs don't have to be registered. Yogurt hasn't been required to be labeled as a digestive-system biocontrol agent, but that's what it does. It does much the same thing for your digestive system that compost tea does for plant surfaces.
Just be careful about what you say and how you say it.
Don't use the chitin-addition process in your advertising for why your worm compost is so great. That's George's patent for the time being.
Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
www.soilfoodweb.com
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Received on Sat Oct 18 2003 - 14:58:56 EDT