In my honest opinion Canterbury Horse Rescue is an absolutely lousy charity. They have let an abusive, ignorant, arrogant and dim-witted individual to tweet on their behalf. This is clearly a clueless ignoramus who spreads environmentally damaging scare stories.
When someone is challenging you and provides links, then you need to examine the evidence. If you don’t understand it then don’t challenge it.
I’ll post the twitter thread below. This happened some time ago but I have recently been researching the central fact at issue, that there cannot be a general definitive diagnosis of ragwort poisoning. This is because mouldy food such as hay can contain aflatoxins which have the same effect at an atomic level and therefore produce damage that is, "indistinguishable from ragwort”. That quote comes from a paper in one of the world’s finest scientific journals Nature. It was printed there only a few years after the paper which announced to the world that the structure of DNA had been discovered, leading to the Nobel Prize for its authors.
First of all Canterbury Horse Rescue posted a quote tweet replying to some one who had seen “introduced Silver Ragwort” growing wild somewhere as it occasionally does. This is Jacobaea maritima. This is a different species to the native (Common) Ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris) so there are no laws mentioning it anyway! However the information they provided to their followers was nonsense even when applied to (Common) Ragwort.
First of all Canterbury Horse Rescue falsely claimed that the council had a duty to clear. No such duty to control for councils exists in the law for any species of ragwort. It also implies the plant is scary and dangerous because such a law is needed. This is misleading.
Then they said you must wear gloves when handling it. This is a repetition of a well-known scare story and myth. It was looked at by some Dutch scientists some years ago who concluded it was nonsense. This is also misleading.
Then they said it was dangerous to pets. There is a standard veterinary text book on plants toxic to cats and dogs. Ragwort isn’t even mentioned! So this is a misleading scare story yet again!
In general the rule is that if an equine organisation says anything negative about ragwort then it will be misleading in some way or another, but Canterbury Horse Rescue really take the biscuit!
Despite being provided by Friends of the Earth’s briefing with detailed information and proper scientific references, this ignoramus ignored the evidence, which includes telling them that there is no reliable test for ragwort poisoning, and carried on arguing.
There are very clear rules placed on registered charities by the Charities Commission which have been utterly ignored by Canterbury Horse Rescue. They did not properly examine the evidence given to them.
Let’s look at their claims regarding Defra hat they said, and it's false by the way, that ragwort is our top killer.. The first thing to realise is as I have proved many times over the years Defra haven’t a clue about the subject. Just to give one example of their bungling ignorance. They once told everyone that ragwort, which is an ecologically important native plant, was on a list of dangerous foreign invaders!
As for using Defra as a source, the bungling ignoramus from Canterbury Horse Rescue had already been told via the Friends of the Earth briefing that there was no reliable test for ragwort poisoning so they needed evidence to show that was wrong. Argument from Authority is one of the biggest errors you can make in thinking.
As the famous American scientist Carl Sagan wrote in his book. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
"Mistrust arguments from authority.... Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else."
Defra are often rather slow and reluctant in replying to Freedom of Information Requests and often don’t actually have the information that you’d expect them have to make some of their claims. They cannot prove their contentions.
Canterbury Horse Rescue probably didn’t ask, and certainly didn’t ask for proof when they’d already being given the requisite information by Friends of the Earth.
Defra are also currently lying about the law to people, with regards to ragwort. It is very easy to prove this as the law is written down in black and white and their information clearly misrepresents it. They claim if you follow their very badly researched advice you will avoid fines when what they fail to tell you is, a lie by omission that the law requires them first to tell you in a specific legal order to control it and then and you can only be fined if a court finds that you unreasonably refused to follow that order,
Some people do form their opinions on the basis of tradition and authority but it is important to know what the research says about such people, on average clinical tests show they are less intelligent!
The basis of the Canterbury Horse Rescue ignoramus's argument was not only wrong but possible evidence of a clinical mental issue!
Here is the actual thread of this discussion on twitter. The bad language used brings them into disrepute and wasn't justified.
The frustration here is it does indeed seem to be a demon haunted world and too many equine charities are talking nonsense on the basis of false information,
Here is my latest information proving there is no reliable test for ragwort poisoning, complete with references, including one to the Nature paper I mention above.
Ragwort poisoning no test can confirm ragwort poisoning 100% (ragwortfacts.com)
