25 2008-07-06T15:47:09-04:00 false Over the past few months or so a whisper of discontent has become a scream of anger. You may have never heard of aminopyralid yet; if you value your garden, you might want to become acquainted with it now. It all started slowly and disjointedly. People started commenting that their plants and crops, particularly their potatoes, salads and legumes, were becoming deformed. It wasn't just home growers, some commercial growers reported the same problems. In many cases the leaves were distorted - almost resembling ferns - and in others the leaves rolled up on themselves before quickly going yellow and dying. Initially there was talk of viruses, but to experienced, established growers this didn't quite ring true. The pattern of destruction ruled out the usual suspects. In the past month, however, information has come fast and furious, as have the cases of infection. Allotment holders studied whose crops had been taken by the mystery condition and whose had been spared; at sites all over the country systematic elimination traced the problem back to manure that some allotment-holders had spread. The Health and Safety Executive, Defra, RHS, Garden Organic, and various environmental health departments were all asked by gardeners to inspect damaged crops. All came to the same conclusion; damage due to herbicide residue. After lab testing, the cause was more specific. The plants had all been poisoned by aminopyralid in manure. Aminopyralid is an industrial herbicide. There's no reason for most of us to have heard of it until now. It's a strong chemical - if you used the recommended dose of 2 litres per hectare in an area the size of a typical garden or allotment you would need literally a few drops - and is therefore only used commercially. It is not sold under its chemical name, but rather as a myriad of brands: Forefront, Banish, Halcyon, Pharaoh, Pro-Banish, Doxstar and Runway. And it was only introduced in 2005. It's pretty nasty stuff. It kills perennial weeds by altering their hormones, and it stays around for a loooong time. It takes two years, in fact, before treated land can be used for edible crops. But after four months it can be used for fodder. And this is how it has entered the food chain. Put simply: animals eat the fodder, animals poop the fodder, the resultant manure is rotted, the rotted manure is sold to... us. We incorporate the manure, we put it in our gardens, our gardens die. Our crops, our shrubs, our flowers, even in some cases our trees. Anywhere affected manure is put down. And if some of your crops are affected, all of the others you manured are too, even if there are no visible signs. And although they don't _think_ they'll harm you, experts are advising you not to become the next stage in the food chain. Personally I don't like the idea of consuming a chemical that survives - and kills hefty-sized plants - at least two years after being sprayed, even after passing through ruminants, even after being rotted, but that might just be my chemical phobia. Nobody is sure how much of our manure is affected and how much is likely to be in the future. The manufacturer does state in the "product information leaflet":http://www.dowagro.com/PublishedLiterature/dh_010e/0901b8038010e4d1.pdf?filepath=/uk/pdfs/noreg/011-01520.pdf&fromPage=GetDoc that tainted manure should not be used on food crops, but how practical is that to ensure? Most of us are not conversant with what aminopyralid is and what it does. You only have to think back to playing chinese whispers as a child to know that word of mouth is not exactly reliable as a form of imparting information. Yet that is exactly what is being relied on; the crop farmer is supposed to tell the guy who buys the silage and the guy who buys the straw and hay, who in turn are supposed to tell the guy who buys the manure. This, in an industry that has lurched from crisis to crisis in recent years due to its inability to put common sense before profit. What is the likely outcome of all of this? Well, if you are unfortunate enough to fall victim, don't expect answers from anyone anytime soon. Ask any of the organisations that would traditionally advise on such matters whether food cropped on the manure is safe to eat and the result is 'we don't know'. The government departments 'don't know'. The organisations - RHS and Garden Organic - 'don't know'. The manufacturers, Dow Agro, (very handily for the company that invented, trialled and distributed it) 'don't know'. For a supposedly safe product there are surprisingly few people willing to put their necks on the line here. Most are hedging their bets and recommending not only that you don't eat this year's crop if you if you believe you have purchased contaminated manure, but that you avoid planting anything next year as well. And you can forget compensation; Dow Agro are telling people to go back to the person who sold them the manure. Who then has to go back to the merchant, who has to go back to every person who supplied them, who has to go back to the farmer, who has to go back to that other farmer who sold them a bit of extra silage... In any case it isn't just small local farmers who have been supplying this stuff, it is some of our best loved brands, too. Oh, what a joy it is to live in an era of corporate responsibility. So why isn't there more of a fuss? Well, if I may be cynical for a moment it could be argued that everybody except us - the growers - has a vested interested in keeping their mouths shut. Dow Agro obviously don't want their name damaged any more than it already is (I'm not listing all of their crimes here, but they're up there with Monsanto). The government won't want to admit that a chemical they declared 'safe' is now causing problems, and in any case their way of dealing with pretty much anything is to ignore it as long as they possibly can. The gardening organisations won't be keen to admit that their best organic practices can be more harmful than nipping out and arming yourself with a cocktail of gardening chemicals. Our only 'hope' is that the market gardening industry kicks up a financially-backed stink. There are lessons to be learnt here: 1) 'Organic' gardening still suffers if every stage of the food chain is not carefully controlled - organic gardeners can source manure from any unregistered land, even if they know it to be awash with chemicals. The fact that those chemicals have been 'processed' by an animal does not necessarily make them safe. 2) No matter how many times lessons should be learnt by large-scale man-made disasters, they never are. And no matter how organic and sustainable, even self-sufficient you try to be, you are still at the mercy of the big corporations. 3) That you are a powerful person and the screen you are looking at is a powerful medium. In the absence of large-scale media publicity, we, the people, are sharing knowledge. If this had happened twenty years ago we would probably still be at the head-scratching stage. Obviously, this is all written from a British perspective. I would be really interested to know if this is affecting people further afield. This could, of course, all turn out to be a storm in a teacup. I really hope so. I felt like some mad conspiricy theorist as I wrote this. Just be safe x 21 false 21643 false false false Entry 3348 User 2008-07-05T20:00:00-04:00 DMY Public 2008-07-07T08:30:55-04:00 3348 Cloudy 18 C