This week Radio4 Gardeners World covered the Contaminated Muck issue.
The information they gave was all good advice and ties in with my research. Compost contamination as opposed to Muck is rarer, so rare that I so often get the response that I am the only one.
Interesting then to note this from the comments page on the BBC site. I am sure johnkane won't mind me copying his e-mail mail here.
6. At 3:14pm on 08 Jul 2008, johnkane wrote:
Regarding the contaminated compost problem, this is also in bags of compost as I have found to my cost. I and a few others have unwittingly poisoned our vegetables using bagged compost products from the garden centres. I?ve been growing vegetables for over 30 years and am devastated to lose nearly all this years produce due to me using a so called ?Organic? compost. I?ve used it in the past with no problem, but even the compost manufacturer was unaware of this new weedkiller. I have preserved my damaged plants and am trying to show as many locals as possible what can happen. I contacted my local allotment society to see how many were affected, and they had not even heard of the problem, they assume someone would have told them of this issue before now. Please help to bring this issue to all gardeners? attention.
In fact johnkane if you read this could you contact me via 'comments'.
My confidence in the Soil Association has been restored by an excellent response to my email in which I asked their opinion on the 2 quotes in my previous blog entry.
I quote the reply here:-
Thank you for your email. Organic is a term defined by EU law. This means that anyone who is using the term on a food product needs to hold a licence with an approved certification body. This law does not apply to gardening products, much to our frustration. However, as we deal with farmers, not gardeners, and whilst we sympathise with the difficulties that gardeners wishing to garden organically face, we rarely get in a situation whereby a farmer of ours visits a garden centre to buy compost.
The Compost Association quote refers to the fact that you can put the word 'organic' on a gardening product without certification. This is why they say 'we need a protocol for organics'. It would have been better had they said 'we need a protocol for gardening products that claim to be organic', as that would have clarified the difference between the law that covers food products labelled organic and the lack of regulation over gardening products.
It's only partly true that we allow PAS 100 material. PAS 100 is actually a method of composting, but is this does not stipulate the kind of material that goes through the composting process. We would only allow material that has been PAS 100 composted that also meets our standards. The reason we make a distinction is that we're concerned about the GM risk of some kinds of fruit and veg wastes. This is why we would not allow household waste composted to PAS 100, but we may allow some green waste that has been PAS 100 composted.
I've asked our certification department to search for Cantelo Nurseries. I also googled them and found a farm name which I also searched on our system, and I've not been able to find a record of them, therefore I don't believe they are licensed with us. Do you have a phone number for them at all?
The last paragraph is really disturbing, not only are are DEFRA confused are they telling lies too?
2008-07-10 @ 17:22