If you read what I do, and then you look around the web and at most books, you'll find that I'm actually doing everything wrong. Try telling that to my corn.
Here is the controversy. I compost everything from the kitchen, and that includes the meat scraps that nearly everyone advises against. I do it because it's food waste, and because I don't want the food waste going into the landfill. I do it because it's biodegradable, and I KNOW it composts well. Bodies have been composting since they invented death. It's not simply possible, it's inevitable.
Now don't get me wrong. I know why some people like to advise against it. 1. Putting a great deal of meat into a hot compost can get smelly fast. 2. Protein is also a very precious thing to wild animals (and domestic), and when they smell it in that box outside they will do whatever they can to get at it. 3. You could wind up with maggots and flies and all kinds of creepy crawlies. 4. And finally, it seems to be recommended that compost that includes meat get a longer 'finishing' time, because of the possibility of contamination of bad bacteria. These are (as far as I know) very real worries, but there are much simpler solutions than throwing valuable nutrients into landfills.
Here is how I deal with these problems instead.
1. Nobody that I can imagine (maybe a slaughter house?) would be filling a compost bin with anything but a very negligible amount of meat products. Even if I put a whole roast into my bin, that would account for a very tiny amount of the available space it has. I won't pretend that decomposing meat won't smell (unless you have a very active population of soldier fly grubs) but if your compost is like mine, that smell is mostly covered- both physically by burying it under some lawn trimmings, or by other smells. My compost typically smells like coffee grounds or orange peels, both of which go into it in very large quantities.
2. Animals DO want to get into your compost bin. My first bin was a haven for rats before I figured out where they were getting in. I had to scrap it altogether and rebuild it so it would be more secure. My bins are made from wooden pallets. They aren't the usual slatted pallets (though you could use those too), they are 'paper pallets', and have no space between each slat. They are also very securely attached together and then have a fifth pallet upside down on top for a lid. The only animals that get inside these days, are the ones I want inside, because they are some of my composters. I think that most people advising against using meat are folks who either are using (or selling) thin plastic made compost bins that probably wouldn't stand up to a hungry animal. I'm confident that mine would.
3. It's actually really easy to control flies in the compost bin. If it weren't, vegetable waste would have the same problem that meat does anyway. I simply do the same for all food waste, cover it up with compost. I scoop out a bit of compost, pour in the food waste into that depression, and then cover it up with the compost around it. In a couple of days to a week, it will look quite a bit more like the compost around it.
4. I'm in no big hurry with it. I make pretty large amounts of it in a year, so while I do wait the whole year for it to finish- I have a lot for my trouble at the end. I also use two bins, so I don't have to hurry it up to make way for more, any more than I need to hurry it up so I can use it in the garden.
However you decide you want to do it, get to composting. It's a great way to be mindful of the fact that there really isn't much organic matter that is 'trash' if we look at things the right way. And it's fun to put your trash bin out every other week with only one little bag in the bottom. You'll get to wishing they would charge you by the pound to haul it away (and I still say they should!)
Here are some hens scratching for worms!
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