All bacteria strains, whether useful, harmful or harmless, need to eat in order to survive. They are the lowest level of the food chain because their food source is organic waste. Every living organism, simple or complex, gives off organic waste during its life span, constantly providing a food supply for bacteria and other microorganisms. When it dies, the organism will eventually be recycled because all bacterial strains are in place to process its decomposition. When a harmful strain becomes dominant enough to cause problems in a specific environment, it's because that strain somehow has been allowed to multiply and prosper, creating a bacterial imbalance in that environment. When the food supply of a specific bacteria strain is limited, so is its growth. If enough useful and harmless microorganisms are in place to compete for the same food supply, a natural balance is established, allowing no one strain, harmful or otherwise, to become dominant.
A probiotic (pro-life) concept purposely uses competing bacterial strains as a biological control This is significantly different from an antibiotic (anti-life) concept which infers the use of a killing agent to destroy the offender. Anti-biotics are very broad in scope and will attack all bacteria, harmful, useful and harmless alike.
It is a fact that bacteria are becoming immune to most of the antibiotics in use today. For the most part, bacteria are not immune to competition, nor are they likely to become immune. A diverse presence of useful and harmless strains, widely dispersed, will help maintain a natural bacterial balance in any environment.
Earth's Balance is proud to introduce natural, safe water and pet care products. By reducing the overuse of antibiotics, Earth's Balance's efforts are providing a healthy alternative to the synthetic treatments that dominate our culture and pollute the public and the environment. Earth's Balance has established a reputation as a leader in the development and manufacture of safe, problem-solving and environmentally-friendly lawn and pet care products.
"For most of us, the name "bacteria" raises specters of plague, cholera, tuberculosis, leprosy, diphtheria and other dreaded ills. However, disease-causing bacteria are only a small minority among a wide diversity of harmless or useful forms, which occupy almost every possible kind of habitat, from the balmy shelter of the human gut to the brine of dying seas and the boiling waters of volcanic springs."
Christine deDuve
Nobel Prize Winning Biologist
Relatively crude, one-celled blobs of matter, lacking a proper nucleus, microorganisms like bacteria consist of bits of DNA and protoplasm encased in a rubbery shell. Because of its simple construction, no individual microbe, such as a simple bacterium, can provide all of its basic needs to survive like a true one-celled microorganisms, each providing an individual function within that bacterial grouping (strain). In nature, symbiotic relationship of a bacterial strain is critical to its' survival, with natural selection providing stability.
You can talk to any microbiologist and you will be told that there are countless types of bacteria and other microorganisms, about which very little is known other than they appear to be harmless and probably contribute to the stability of bacterial activity. Only recently have certain universities received research grants to study unknown and harmless bacterial strains. Prior to this, mostly pathogenic (harmful) forms have been studied with any intense interest.
Microbiologists now carry a cup and spoon when traveling in the hopes of discovering some previously unknown bacterial strain before it becomes lost, due to natural attrition or human intervention.
So...what's the big deal? Why is there such interest if these microbes aren't posing a threat to us? One reason can be summed up in a simple concept, competition for food.
What qualities do Earth's Balance products possess?
1. As a natural occurring combination of beneficial and harmless microbes, they are a blend of aerobic and anaerobic microbes cultured together in a water medium. This unique blending enables activity to occur in either dark or sunlight and functions equally well in both water and land applications. Unlike "designer" microbes, cultured in a laboratory and later combined by recipe, we provide the wildest possible presence of compatible, friendly microbes. They have proven their ability to help offset microbial imbalance problems.
2. Application to decomposing organic waste material, which is the food source for our microbes, allows for the constant growth of enzymes, a by-product of microbial activity. Enzymes are critical to the breaking down of organic waste particles into digestible sized nutrients, enabling the microbes to consume, reproduce and create more enzymes in an ongoing cycle. Our friendly microbes have the potential to follow and digest organic waste in the ground, down to the water table, if that is where the food source leads them.
3. Helps to control odors by their ability to quickly break down the formation of decomp gases, the inevitable by product of decomposing, organic waste.
4. Maintains pH levels in the alkaline range. This is a constant function of the microbes, which could never be duplicated manually.
