Contaminated manure warning

I am so impressed by how quickly word is getting around (and that more than one of us cared enough to start a petition!) and 323 signatures already is a good start.

BUT WE NEED MORE! Tell everyone you can think of! BTW I have started a website and am in the process of starting a letter writing campaign, anyone who will write to their elected reps I would be very grateful, PM me for the addy as I haven't got it checked out with the mods yet.

calleyw wrote: »

I beg to differ on that point. I believe by law that farmers have to keep records of what they put on the land how much and when. As well as records of what stored chemicals they have on the farm.

Also I don't believe any farmer worth his salt would not know what has been put on his land :rolleyes:

No different to a allotment holder. Would they just put any old rubbish on there allotment. No didn't think so.

Fair dos if you believe that. But if you get a contractor out to spray your land all you have to know is that you've had a contractor in. The contractor gives you a slip of paper with a bunch of meaningless chemical names on it - aminopyralid is never sold as 'aminopyralid', incidentally, but by a host of brand names - and you tuck it away for the records. You don't have to know what the specific chemical ingredients are or what the ramifications are if they enter the food chain. You probably don't even know that you have a legal responsibility to inform anyone you supply that the goods in question have been treated with aminopyralid.

Or maybe you know that your land is treated with aminopyralid, you know that you have a statutory duty to inform buyers of that fact, you just don't bother to.

If you were trying to defend the farmers who have allowed this to happen you were mistaken. Either they should have known about it, or they did and they didn't care. I think your take on it makes the farmers look far worse, doesn't it?! Because one of those scenarios is being played out across the country with startling regularity. I don't know which, but the contamination is definitive proof that it IS happening. I see no need to defend the farmers who are doing either. The fact is that the British agricultural economy has lurched from crisis to crisis during recent years due to its inability to put common sense before profit.

As for putting 'any old rubbish' on your allotment, well, I think an awful lot of allotment holders do that, actually. They use all kinds of chemicals and if you can buy it in a shop you consider it 'safe', by and large you don't think you need to have a phD to confirm that. And sometimes they use a bigger dose than recommended, sometimes they don't read the instructions properly, sometimes they use that stuff their mate got which is for farm use and is way stronger than what you can buy in the shops. So if you 'didn't think so' I'm afraid you're wrong. I'm not defending them, because I think they're just as in the wrong as anyone else who misuses pesticides.

Shameless bump

Hi,Just an update on how the petition is going,there are 714 to date this is not bad for a couple of days but could be better,if you dont want your manure contaminated please sign.

Thanks.

Ooops did I accidentally shove this back to the top again - oh dear!