Bone Meal - Wikipedia

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Dietary supplement

edit Main article: Meat and bone meal

Bone meal, along with a variety of other meals, especially meat meal, is used as a dietary/mineral supplement for livestock. The improper application of bone and meat meal products in animal nutrition can contribute to the spread of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known in cattle as Mad Cow Disease. Proper heat control can reduce salmonella contaminants.[2]

Bone meal was historically used as a human dietary calcium supplement. Research has shown that calcium and lead in their ionic forms (Ca2+, Pb2+) have similar atomic structures and so create a potential for accumulation of lead in bones.[3] American actress Allison Hayes was poisoned in the 1970s with a calcium supplement made from horse bone containing high amounts of lead, which moved the EPA to develop more stringent importation rules.

Fertilizer

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Bone meal provides phosphorus and calcium to plants, along with a largely inconsequential amount of nitrogen.[4] The N-P-K rating of bone meal is typically 3–15–0[5] along with a calcium content of around 12% (18% CaO equiv.),[6] although it can vary quite a bit depending on the source from 1–13–0 to 3–22–0.[citation needed]

As bone meal is water-insoluble, it needs to be broken down before the plant can absorb it, either by soil acidity or by microbial activity producing acids. According to the Colorado State University, it can only be broken down in acidic soil (pH < 7.0) and releases its nutrients over a span of 1 to 4 months.[5]

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