Monday 25 March 2013

Amateur Gardening Gets It Wrong About Ragwort

The latest edition of Amateur Gardening magazine contains a classic piece of misinformation about ragwort.

A reader has written in worried because it is in the garden and it is poisonous. Well lots of things in the garden are poisonous like rhubarb leaves and runner bean roots so why the panic.At least in this case he says the risk to humans is negligible. in fact it isn't even worth mentioning

The magazine's expert, John Negus,  gets the law spectacularly wrong with this statement.

"The Ragwort Control Act imposes a duty of responsibility on  landowners to  prevent its spread onto grazing land."


In fact the Act says nothing of the sort . It merely creates a Code of Practice. (which also contains poor information fed by the hysteria of which I plan to post more in the future) This is a briefing on ragwort law.
In fact there is no automatic requirement on landowners to control ragwort. Only last year the Advertising Standards Authority stopped a series of adverts with misleading statements including a leaflet from the British Horse Society

If the journalists concerned are reading this then this earlier posting about the stuff made up about ragwort should be informative.


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