Paranoid US politician makes joke of himself

Talk of excrement and excretion will often raise a laugh or perhaps a nose twitch of disgust. US senator Rick Scott has managed to achieve both of those by saying that Chinese garlic "poses grave threats to our (the US') national security, public health, and economic prosperity" because it is grown in sewage. His scatological scaremongering has not only made him the butt of jokes but also led to people looking askance at his willingness to stoop so low with his muckraking just to try and smear China.

Senator Scott and his team have evidently not done their due diligence. He referred to "online videos, cooking blogs and documentaries" showing how people in China use sewage as fertilizer. Scott seems not to know that back in 2017, the Office for Science and Society at McGill University in Quebec, which attempts to popularize and explain scientific issues, had already concluded there is "no evidence" that sewage is used as a fertilizer for growing garlic in China. It added that: "In any case, there is no problem with this".

Although it might not sound appealing, animal waste is an effective fertilizer. The fermented waste of most animals commonly seen around a farm serves as good fertilizer for plants because it's a rich source of nutrients. That's true of human waste as well.