Your horse forum bad hysteria

If you want to see the effect of bad writing in the press, you have to look no further than the Your Horse forum.

Your Horse is a magazine with a bad history of  posting nonsense about ragwort. Printing alarming nonsense about the law and other things and encouraging the readers to pass this on to MPs. So it should come as no surprise that its forum contains people repeating nonsense about ragwort.

This is just one example of a rich vein of material recently drawn to my attention. There are some really silly quotes.

Don't farmers realise that ragwort is dangerous to ALL animals, even humans?

Yes it is poisonous to things that eat it., but animals avoid it when it is growing and eat around it and humans don't eat it. The class of dangerous chemicals present are actually found in 3% of the world's plants.
 May may plants are poisonous but plant poisonings are very rare in animals and in humans.

I  believe the farmer ( & actually everyone else! ) has a legal duty to keep his land ragwort free as it is a notifiable weed 

There is no automatic legal duty on any one  in the UK to keep land free of ragwort and there is no such thing as a notifiable weed in UK law.


And lo and behold we have the old skin absorbtion myth again!.

Sorry its the juice of the plant which soaks through your skin that causes the problem and it will cause liver and kidney failure not a nice way to go.

This has been looked at . There is no problem here. The toxins need to be absorbed in quantity, ar poorly absorbed through the skin , and then need to be changed in the gut before they become toxic.

This blog does tend to get a bit repetitive I know but these stories need to be combatted.
It really isn't at all acceptable for people to be mislead into saying silly things on the internet as a result of campaigning , often with those with financial gain at heart.

I could if I chose to devote the time probably find something somewhere on the internet everyday that is repeating false material about ragwort.

 

More Nonsensical Ragwort Twittering

After yesterday's posting correcting the twitter user @dookist we were treated to a frankly hilarious display of exactly the problem that causes me to blog. It is of course no sin to be ignorant, but it is frustrating that when you supply someone with the sources of proper data that they seem to carry on ranting ignorantly.

There was a flurry of responses These are just some which illustrate the point beautifully.

@Ragwort_horses @ragwortfacts Obviously, the onus is on the farmer producing the hay. There's so much ragwort now, that people go to France!

This is really really silly. Ragwort is actually DECREASING in the UK. We know this because it has been subjected to proper scientific study as part of a government sponsored project.

@Ragwort_horses @ragwortfacts I don't think it justifiable to accuse someone of being hysterical, when one can be prosecuted for growing it.

But you can't just be prosecuted for growing ragwort. It is true that in extreme circumstances you may be ordered to control it, but in the absence of such an order there is no obligation to control it and you can only be prosecuted if you ignore an order. This has apparently never happened and also the orders were hardly used until people started making things up about ragwort to scare people.
Here is a briefing on ragwort law.
 

@ragwortfacts @maldondc Hysterical, moi?! It blows from the verges onto hay crops, & a few years down the line you horse gets liver failure.

First of all ragwort poisoning is rare.People continually quote Liverpool University as a source of expertise and a source of high figures. Well they have supplied figures for a five year period, the totality of the data that  they could provide. There was not one single case of ragwort poisoning recorded over these five years. NOT ONE!

Secondly ragwort seeds do not normally blow far. Only a matter of metres in fact.
Here you will find the data on ragwort seed dispersal

My message to @Dookist is this. If you are going to go into a public forum and post information, you had better make sure that you know what you are talking about. I have been studying this subject for  over  a decade. From where I am standing you seem rather foolish.

Ragwort is good for bees in general

Today's blog entry is in reply to two tweets that have appeared on twitter.

@Dookist 26 Apr @MaldonDC Please delay cutting of rural roadside verges until flowers have set seed... Save our bees!! Cut late summer & remove ragwort...

@Dookist 24 Apr A cut in late summer would be much more beneficial, plus it would help remove injurious weeds like Ragwort, and Dock. #SaveThe Bees RT?

It is really quite worrying to see that someone is concerned about insect conservation and then has been mislead by the quite crazy propaganda about ragwort. I have previously covered how this was all made up.

The story that ragwort poses a serious and dangerous risk to livestock and particularly so when alive really has been made up. I would recommend that this particular twitter user and Maldon Council take note of this.

Ragwort is a particularly good source of nectar for insects in general. It is true that it can make honey taste bad, but let us remember that the honey bee is just one of many bee species and the others require nectar too. So for bees in general ragwort is a beneficial plant.

There will be even more evidence about the nonsensical nature of the anti-ragwort campaign available soon
on the Ragwort Facts website

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.

Nick Ferrari wrong about ragwort on This Morning

I blogged a few days ago about the stories now circulating that somehow ragwort was contaminating the horse meat that has got into burgers and other supposed beef products on sale in the UK.

I have tracked down the source of this story. It comes from a statement made by Nick Ferrari on ITV's This Morning programme last Friday.

He said, in the context of problems from horse meat contamination of meat products,  that horses got a liver complaint from ragwort. It was the repeated by people on twitter as posing a risk to human health, which was the context in which the remark was made.

It simply isn't true that there is a risk. It is one of a long list of  ragwort myths which are circulated frequently. It is almost understandable, because they are repeated so often, that people believe them to be true.

The first question really is "why horses?",  any grazing animal might be a cause. Ragwort poisoning is rare.
Despite all the stuff that has been made up about it. Animals won't eat it unless it is in hay, this is because of their basic biology. Animals always instinctively avoid common poisons and these chemicals are in 3% of the world's plants.

This is a statement  Dr Peter Cheeke of Animal Sciences Department Oregon State University, a leading researcher into Ragwort. It is in the context of sheep but it applies equally to other meats.

The PA [ pyrrolizidine alkaloids] are not accumulated in the tissues; it is the damage that is cumulative. The damage is confined to the liver, which in an animal with ragwort toxicity would be shrunken and fibrotic. The carcass would likely be condemned because of the liver damage. In sheep which had consumed ragwort but did not show obvious liver damage, there would be no residues of PA in the meat. The PA are metabolized in the liver, and excreted as conjugates in the urine. Small amounts of pyrrole bound to DNA in the liver would not be measurable. Thus in my judgement there is no concern whatsoever about possible human toxicity from consumption of meat from sheep which had consumed ragwort.

So we can see that it  just it isn't true.

Always these two sites will give proper information.

Ragwort Facts
Ragwort Myths and Facts

Horse Meat Hoax

Today's entry is a little piece of hysteria that is being circulated on Twitter and may have been in the media, although I have, as yet, been unable to pin down precisely where.

Most of the scary stuff you will see about ragwort has been made up.


As I regularly blog there are a whole host of hoaxes and misunderstandings about ragwort and this tweet from Twitter exemplifies the latest manifestation of an old one.

@BBCBreaking Outrageous, BBC unaware #horsemeat health risks. Ragwort, bute, Trichinella worm. Could have been eating #horsemeat for years!

This is someone who seems to be trying to interest the BBC in repeating the hoax.

Ragwort does not pose a risk of an size at all to meat.  The horse meat scandal is one thing but all the science indicates that there is no risk to humans from ragwort. Firstly grazing animals have evolved to avoid eating poisons, secondly the possibility of the meat being a problem has been looked at by experts and it has found not to be a risk. Basically, the stuff goes out of an animal's system very quickly, and any  that remains is bound up
For the technical details see this briefing on ragwort and meat

World Horse Welfare poor ragwort information

This is a few years old, this story, but I have just discovered this piece of poor information distributed by a horse charity. Unfortunately the horse charities have a poor record of accuracy. A while ago the British Horse Society were criticised after  their inaccurate stories led to one  of their leaflets being banned and a lot of inaccurate adverts stopped after action by the Advertising Standards Authority.

This time it is a letter published by World Horse Welfare.

It makes a number of questionable statements:-

I AM writing in response to Katie Campling’s article on ragwort “Get rid of this killer weed” (Examiner August 16).
The article stated that ragwort is “not thought to be dangerous to humans”, but World Horse Welfare would like to urge people to take extreme caution when handling it. Humans can absorb the poison through their skin, so ragwort should NEVER be handled without gloves..... 

However, people who have properly studied the plant have a different view. This article by Dutch Ragwort expert Esther Hegt and Dr Pieter Pelser a world leading authority on ragwort with a PhD on the plant  comes to a different conclusion.

Through our research about the sources of the reports on the danger of touching ragwort, we conclude that there is no substantial evidence that there is a health risk for people. The amount of pyrrolizidine alkaloids that might be absorbed through the skin is very low and there is no proof that these alkaloids are being changed into a toxic form.

Then the letter goes on:-

Ragwort is a hooligan plant which spreads incredibly quickly; once it flowers about 200,000 seeds per plant are open to the elements and this year World Horse Welfare field officers have answered record numbers relating to it.

Aside from the rather emotive and unscientific use of the word "hooligan" the facts seem at odds with these claims. Ragwort seeds have been studied and the overwhelming majority fall within a few metres of the parent plant. See Ragwort Seed dispersal for more details. So It does not spread "incredibly quickly"
It is also untrue that a plant usually produces 200,000 seeds per plant. This is a highly unlikely and exceptional figure in fact half that figure is a high figure as we would see from the studies here in this article on Ragwort Seed production.

As for them receiving record calls could that be because people like this charity are publishing exaggerated information which is generating hysteria?

We do know of course that lots of the panic about ragwort appears to be totally made up.