Letter to the Editor, Thursday August 25, 2016

Pick wild food carefully

After many requests to the council to get their contractors to add colourant to their spray tanks, and getting nowhere, I feel it is time to advise the wider public on the possibility of ingesting poison that is being sprayed on 'wild food' by the contractors of the Far North District Council.

There are many people local to our area and, I suspect, also further afield, that regularly walk the fencelines, hedgerows and roadsides to collect puha, watercress, dandelion and nasturtium which are all green, lush and available right now. Case in point: Saturday morning and two locals are collecting puha along the roadside; fresh, green and healthy?

Well it was that morning, but had they waited until the afternoon they could well have cut and eaten the same plants but with a coating of spray added by the guy from Recreational Services I saw spraying in the village at around 2pm.

As this spray is absorbed into the plant structure there is little to be gained by washing the plants, and it takes a day or two to show any sign that spray has been applied. That is if the growing conditions are ideal.

Had a colourant been added to alert all passersby that there is contamination by dixon, glyphosate or Tordon, there is no way that anyone would be gathering the greens for dinner and risking at best a sour taste and at worst a possible trigger for cancer, as some of these sprays are advised as carcinogenic and come with expressed health warnings.

Please be aware that just because the plants look good and appear healthy, there is no guarantee that what you see is what you get.

To the Far North District Council, I am not 'anti-spray' as someone once suggested, but please, I just want to know that my friends and I can cut and eat the wild greens that abound here when they are green and not eat them when you have coloured them red or blue. It's not too much to ask is it?

JOY
Kohukohu