It is only bad if you plant your root crops in it and then eat them without washing them well and cooking them first.

Personally, I would compost it but we compost our own feces as well and have a very hot, well managed compost pile that will then age for a year (without anything new being added) before use.

Here is a link that might be useful: Humanure Handbook

One of my cats likes to poo on the lawn and not bury it. I pick them up when they are nice and dry and toss them in the compost pile.

The disposal of pet feces is a real dilema today because you are not supposed to put them in your compost pile because of the very real potential that your pet could be a carrier of many human disease pathogens and cat feces can be carriers of toxoplasmosis. Burying them in your yard is also not recommended because they could pollute the ground water, but sending them to a landfill with your other trash results in the same thing.
All of the wild animals out there also deposit waste everywhere, that natural spring water probably is not nice and pure, and the feces from them would be as likely, if not more likely, to have some disease pathogens. What we need is some research into safe, economical disposal methods.

kimmsr,
There has been some research. Hot compost takes care of the pathogens better than any other method.
http://www.weblife.org/humanure/default.html
The trick is it has to get hot enough and be allowed to rest for long enough.

Here is a link that might be useful: Humanure Handbook

I compost dog poo. My dogs are healthy, eating clean food. They are vaccinated and worm free.

Read the humanure handbook. I was going to post the link but tclnyx beat me to it, twice.

I compost both of my healthy dog's poop and sometimes bury it right in the beds where my banana plants go...well crazy for it! You can't argue with the results....check out my website photos.

Here is a link that might be useful: Panama John's Tropical Zone

I wouldn't be overly concerned with toxo from cat feces. The cats pick it up from the dirt in the first place, so if you're dealing with dirt on a regular basis, you've probably been exposed. If the cats are indoor cats and have not been outside for more than two months, they're safe.

Feral cats can't be controlled but mostly go in sheltered locations and then they cover the scat, so it quietly rots down without anyone even knowing it's there.

Dog poo goes the same way, and some people just toss it under a bush and cover it with mulch; if you have a large dog or multiple dogs, or scoop indoor kitty boxes, consider getting a digester to deal with it, and use the compost from the digester only on ornamentals.

Agree with demeter. If you have cats and you're cleaning the cat box, you are also exposed to toxo. But it's only harmful if you are pregnant or immune suppressed.

My cats also poo in the flower beds, especially the tomato beds and they are doing quite well.

I never really considered composting it because 1) I would never be able to open my compost bin from the smell and 2) My dog isn't grain fed. I have a great dane so her piles are like land mines. Ground water pollution is a hillarious concept to me because I live in the forever hot and dry southern AZ.

Nothing, Nothing smells worse than cat poo. Shoot the cat and bury it in the compost. Just kidding. I agree with growingup, to worry about ground water pollution from animal poo is bull%#*! (pun intented). The more we are exposed to as we grow, the more resistance we develop. Or you could go for a "sterile world" I suppose.

All of the water we have on earth today was present at the beginning and is all we will have until the end. No more is being made anywhere in the world and all that we use has been recycled many times. Even in arid areas of the world water flows through the ground, groundwater, and that is how springs flow, from groundwater, and that is how many people get the water they use, pump it out of the ground, ground water, whether an individual home or a whole city. Even here with all the water in Lake Michigan many of the towns and villages pump out the groundwater to supply the residents.
As we use this water it is, in various ways, "treated" (filtered through soil) on its way back into the ground on its way back to a stream on its way back to a river on its way back to a lake, the ocean, or even evaporated to come back down as rain. The excess Nitrogen, Phosphorus, glyphosate, and other poisons that we dump on our yards and gardens is carried by that water stream and much is in the water we drink, so we are poisoning ourselves.
Anyone that thinks the water in a mountain stream is pure is delusional.

"If you have cats and you're cleaning the cat box, you are also exposed to toxo. But it's only harmful if you are pregnant or immune suppressed."

Big note: Cats only shed the toxo organism for a few weeks after first being infected. So if the cats are indoor cats and have not been outside for more than a month and have not eaten raw or undercooked food, there is no danger. Also, the organism excreted with the feces takes one or more days to become infectious, so dumping the litter every day is advisable if you're at risk.

My concern with domestic dog and cat feces is that there are millions of dogs and cats in this country, a much higher population density than the soil can deal with. Consider how many dogs and cats live in your neighborhood, compared with how many coyotes and bobcats would have lived there before urbanization. Way more poo being produced now.

According to my local health department, bacterial contamination from dog and cat feces is mainly a problem when the feces are left lying on the soil surface, near a surface water body (stream or lake) or storm drain. The bacteria etc. can easily wash over the soil in even a moderate rainfall and into the stream or storm drain. The health department here recommends either bagging and trashing the feces ( our garbage is trucked to a regional high-tech contained landfill in a much drier part of the state) or burying it several inches deep, below the 'topsoil'. The idea being, that even our glacial gravelly till soil will filter out pathogens before they reach the groundwater, whereas surface runoff will not filter out pathogens. This doesn't work as well with shallow soils or high water tables of course. And yes, everyone in our county is on groundwater, even the municipal sources are groundwater.

I have two dogs in a small yard. I bag up the landmines and trash them. But it does smell, and our garbage is only picked up once every two weeks. Fortunately it's very cool here 11.5 months of the year! In our brief hot weather I dig a pit in the back corner of the yard and dump the piles in there and add a little dirt. I do also sometimes take advantage of the holes the dogs dig and drop it in there, but it just makes them go start another hole so I don't do that often. When I lived on acreage with no streams or storm drains in the vicinity, I only picked up the lawn and the trails, and tossed it into brushy areas where it wouldn't get stepped on, and could be decomposed by the usual assortment of decomposers - slugs, flies, fungi etc. 3 dogs did not overwhelm the capacity of 5 acres, but 2 dogs does overwhelm 0.2 acre.

Composting is a viable option if you have an actively managed compost pile. I don't. Too many rats here. I've also seen contraptions for attaching to your sewer line for dumping dog poop. I tried one once but it couldn't handle the bullmastiff's output. Friends with an even smaller yard than mine have something that composts dog waste in a sunken garbage can, I think it's called a Doggy Dooly or something like that.

I know my dogs are healthy. I would not swear that all the neighbors' dogs are as healthy however. And who knows about all those cats allowed to run loose! Plus, our suburban neighborhood supports a lot more rats and raccoons and possums than open space would, and the rats and possums aren't even native here anyway.

I think the earth is capable of purifying a little poo from animals. Commercial Fertilizer is causing the water problems. Mountain stream have probably never been "pure". Probably aren't supposed to be.

Human poop, cat poop and dog poop belong in the garbage! I would honestly rather consume pesticides.

outsiders71,
Do you poop in garbage cans instead of toilets?

outsiders-I'm with you. Animals that eat only greens make better poop for growing things. I just think that people who worry about cat poo causing water pollution is a little overboard.

Tylynx: No I do not poop in garbage cans and I think you know what I meant by my statement. Do you eat your own poop? ;). Your hot pile may be able to kill harmful bacteria, and that's if and only if you do get it as hot as it's supposed to etc. How hot does a hot pile have to get to destroy chemical substances, heavy metals and toxins that your body just passes in the wastes?

Alan: Agreed on both accounts.

I'm actually astonished that people are actually thinking about saving cat/dog poop after the big pet food crisis we had a few months ago. Composting the poop that contains the toxins that killed your pet....yummo!

What I'm saying though, is that flushing such wastes down the toilets is putting those toxins along with any pathogens back into the water supply. This is what a septic leach field does, it leaches the liquids back into the ground water. The sewage systems pump the stuff to some central location where they separate the solids from the liquid and try to kill off pathogens with chlorine and then dump the liquid (now contaminated by chlorine and any other chemical people dumped down the drains) back into the water supplies. By the way, round worm can eggs survive this process where they can't survive hot compost.

"How hot does a hot pile have to get to destroy chemical substances, heavy metals and toxins that your body just passes in the wastes?"

Most of our poop does not contain much of these or we would probably already be dead.

Most comments about waste containing heavy metals probably comes from sewage treatment where other substances get dumped down the drains and contaminate the sewage sludge and therefore making it unsuitable for agricultural land application. (By the way, sewage sludge does get used to fertilize land in some places and those chemical, heavy metals, and toxins might be in there. I prefer not to contaminate my manure with such terrible stuff by flushing it away with clean drinking water which also gets contaminated.)

This comment is a bit interesting. How many chemical substances, heavy metals and toxins do you think you eat? And if you eat them, why are you worried about composting them, diluting that with dirt and then growing plants you may or may not eat with it? If you really are worried about these things getting back to you then the current method of using good drinking water to flush waste away should be far more troubling to you than some one composting their own and perhaps their pet's crap.

I know most people are a bit Fecophobic and the topic of composting their own poop (or even that of their pet's) grosses them out. We are not likely to change those mines overnight. I just know that eventually the idea of using clean drinking water to flush away "waste" and contaminate more clean drinking water will be seen for the bad idea that it is. Composting is the most effective means of dealing with human manure with it's pahtogens while also keeping our water supplies clean.

Here is a link that might be useful: Humanure Handbook

tclynx: I like your optimism but unless you are eating a clean and raw diet you are indeed pooping those things out. Do you take multivitamins or any medications? I agree with you that we should work on better waste management systems, however I would never and will never use human waste in the food I grow. Biodigesters sound like a better idea for human waste.

I'm not saying that anyone must use their human manure compost for growing their food crops (though it does help close the nutrient cycle.) I'm just saying that composting it is far better than flushing it. Digesters sound like a good idea but I really know little about them or any byproducts.

Cats can't survive on greens only.

But honestly, I have 3 cats that poop outside half the time and it has't been a problem. They would not tend to bury it near water, but look for loose soil. In my yard, that means in the flower beds or under the pine straw.

Burying dog poop in the holes they dig is a great way to stop your dog from digging in a certain spot! Most dogs don't want to dig in their own poo.

I do this sometimes. Never saw a problem with it and I still don't. I think it is a good idea.

After the toilet is flushed, the material magically disappears somewhere and its not something to ever think about.

Everyone should know where their flush goes, how its treated, what chemicals are used, and what is done with the sludge from that process.