Soft-fruit growers are celebrating after forcing the Daily Mail and celebrity gardener Monty Don into a humiliating u-turn.
British Summer Fruits took on the national newspaper after columnist Don launched a concerted campaign against the UK’s strawberry industry.
Lawrence Olins, chairman of BSF, said: “I was incensed by the way he has been disseminating misinformation about our industry throughout the summer.
“He has caused serious upset to our industry via an ongoing smear campaign. I wrote to the managing editor at the Daily Mail on two occasions and was promised a correction which never appeared, so I then decided to take it to the Press Complaints Commission.”
The PCC put pressure on the paper and Don was forced to correct what the BSF described as a ‘inaccurate and damaging’ statement about the frequency of use of pesticides on strawberries. The comment was the basis for Don labelling the strawberry industry ‘Junk Fruit’.
Don’s correction, which appeared in Saturday’s gardening pages of the Mail’s weekend magazine, said: “I should say here that when I wrote, a few weeks ago, that most commercially produced strawberries are sprayed with chemicals every other day, I was using the term loosely.
“In fact, I am informed that strawberry crops are sprayed roughly ten to 12 times a year, and about five to six times from flowering to the end of the picking period. I am delighted to set the record straight.”
Olins said the PCC decision “sends a shot across Monty Don’s bows and any other reporters who quote first and check their facts afterwards”.
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