By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Horse lovers have been rapped over the knuckles over claims ragwort is killing their animals.
The Advertising Standards Authority told the British Horse Society to tone down its campaign for tough laws to combat the “toxic weed”.
Wildlife group Buglife told the ASA that the claims were “exaggerated” and the plant was a vital pollen source for rare butterflies and bees.
Member Neil Jones said: “I am glad to see they are being held to account.”
But the BHS said its fears about “deadly” ragwort were not taken seriously enough.
Buglife, the insect charity, claims that chemical companies and councils are telling people to eradicate the plant from the countryside because of the risk it could kill horses and other livestock.
Some companies said ragwort kills up to 6,500 horses and ponies every year but, according to Matt Shardlow, Chief Executive of Buglife, just 13 deaths have been recorded since 2005.
There are thirty species of insects that are entirely reliant on ragwort and about a third of them are scare or rare and ragwort is also a critically important nectar and pollen source for hundreds of species of butterflies, bees, moths, beetles and flies, thus helping to maintain what remains of our much declined wildlife.
The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) Recently also cracked down on chemical companies who have suggested in pamphlets and advertising that landowners have a legal obligation to get rid of ragwort in order to boost sales. There is no legal obligation on any landowner to eradicate ragwort with the exception where the weed poses a risk to horses, cattle or sheep living in the area.
The Department for the Environment’s ‘Ragwort Code’ says that land owner may be ordered to control ragwort “if there is a significant risk to livestock”.
There needs to be a more honest debate around ragwort as ragwort is subject to a whole set of campaigning myths, which are repeated daily on the Internet and in the press, including speculation about the spread of ragwort becoming greater every year.
The British Horse Society, however, claims that a significant number of horses are killed every year, even though their deaths are not recorded. Though this is something that I find very hard to swallow.
While the BHS agrees that ragwort does not have to be removed from the whole countryside but must be controlled where animals are living, claiming that ragwort is a significant danger to horses, cattle and sheep and a horrible, horrible death.
A leaflet by Plantlife sets things into a little more of a perspective and, as with so many things, we must be careful as to how things often get blown entirely out of proportion.
If indeed so many horses die each year and their deaths are not recorded as being cause by ragwort maybe a closer check should be made as to whether or not the horses, or other livestock that could be affected, did actually die as a result of ragwort poisoning or of some other cause such as, for instance, ingesting the wires from some Chinese lantern.
http://www.plantlife.org.uk/uploads/documents/RAGWORT_leaflet_FINAL.pdf
© 2011
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