Zapping manure with special electrode to produce fertilizers, other chemicals

If you kill everything you take a competitive ecosystem of many species and leave raw materials for the next, most invasive colonizer which is often more likely to cause disease.

Sterilizing manure is likewise pointless unless kept in a sealed container, once you expose it to the world it's going to get something alive in it real quick.

To prevent disease you really need to do the opposite, let it ferment longer to allow the various waves of decomposers access to break down and metabolize as much as possible to get the resulting material further away from what it would be like inside a living body as the more different environments are, the less likely species will be able to thrive in both environments. (this is why fermenting pickles works, microbes that find salty veggies tasty won't find you tasty because you're not nearly so salty or acidic)

You do sterilize manure as mushroom culture to prevent competition with the fungi, but that is done in quite controlled environments.

Also, you don't put raw manure directly into soils. You need to compost them first for at least 6 months. That alone breaks down and kills harmful organisms.

"Although manure itself can be used as fertilizer, doing so can be costly, logistically challenging and has environmental drawbacks."

... but knowing what I know about permaculture design, this assertion comes from a particular way of seeing, one that that contributes to system issues. It's not enough to look at efficiency, you also have to look at efficacy. I think the simple aproach of muck-spreading is better.

Integrating ranching with farming reduces the "logistical challenge", and proper design means the "environmental drawbacks" turns into solutions.

One benefit you overlooked is knowing exactly what and how much you're putting in your soil. A bag of ammonium nitrate gives you a known quantity to factor with while shit is far from homogeneous in its makeup.

Manure is also very heavy, and therefore expensive to transport, and that’s without going into restrictions that kick in when moving animal waste long distances.

Pathogens, weeds and even pesticide residue are also a concern. The dairy I work with makes use of large digester tanks that help reduce these.

Basically manure is great when you are close to a source (like a dairy), but you can’t put on too much or move it around too far without issues. So there is value in being able to economically break it up into it’s components.