Reports that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) is drawing up guidelines to ban livestock from orchards for up to a year before the fruit is due for picking have been received with incredulity by the Country Land & Business Association (CLA).
The FSA is believed to be concerned that fruit picked up from the ground could be contaminated by the animals' droppings, a worry dismissed as "too ridiculous to take seriously" by the CLA.
“Excluding grazing animals from orchards does not make sense in practice. Our members would like to know how the FSA proposes to protect fruit from bird droppings. People have always eaten fruit from grazed orchards. If these rules are imposed, it would put UK producers at a disadvantage compared to importers and lead to a loss of these important habitats,” said Oliver Harwood, CLA Head of Rural Economy.
“Given that testing regularly shows that more imported fruit contains banned pesticides and excessive pesticide residues than UK grown fruit, presumably the overall protection afforded to UK consumers would fall with the loss of UK orchards.
"You cannot offer consumer protection by banning grazing livestock from orchards: fruit is inevitably handled many times between the orchard and the fruit bowl. Consumers must take responsibility for simple food hygiene and this should include washing or peeling fruit before you eat it.”
The CLA has written to the FSA to repeat the concerns and advice on managing manure for food safety that it submitted to the FSA as long ago as 2002.
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