Researchers trying to find uses for cattle manure, including making floors
US - Home-buyers of tomorrow could find themselves walking across floors made from manure. That's no cow pie-in-the-sky dream, according to researchers at Michigan State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
22 March 2007
1 minute read
And the resulting product smells just fine.
The researchers hope it could be part of the solution to disposing of the 1.5 trillion to 2 trillion pounds of manure produced annually in the United States.
The concept has its skeptics.
"Is this something you're going to bring into the house?" asked Steve Fowler, an economist with the Composite Panel Association, a fiberboard-makers trade group based in Gaithersburg, Md.
Farmers traditionally use manure to fertilize their fields. But as the scale of farms has grown - with more and more animals densely concentrated in a single location - they can find themselves with too little land for the manure they produce.
Source: Casa Grande Valley Newspapers
