At a time when most individuals have in all probability polished off their vacation leftovers, Belgium’s meals company has issued a stunning seasonal well being warning: don’t eat your Christmas tree.
The message on Tuesday got here after town of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold within the nation’s northern Flanders area, raised eyebrows by posting ideas for recycling the conifers on the dinner desk.
Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the city web site prompt needles might be stripped, blanched and dried – to be used in making flavoured butter, for example.
Requested what they considered the thought, the reply from Belgium’s federal company for meals chain safety, AFSCA, was a convincing “No.”
“Christmas bushes are usually not destined to enter the meals chain,” it stated in a press release.
“There isn’t a method to make sure that consuming Christmas bushes is protected – both for individuals or animals,” it stated, citing the possible presence of pesticides on most bushes cultivated for the season.
“What’s extra, there is no such thing as a straightforward method for shoppers to inform if Christmas bushes have been handled with flame retardant – and never figuring out that might have critical, even deadly penalties,” the company warned.
“Briefly, there are lots of causes to not promote nor encourage the re-use of Christmas bushes within the meals chain,” it stated.
Seemingly taking the warning on board, town tweaked its publish – altering its headline from “Eat your Christmas tree” to learn as an alternative: “Scandinavians eat their Christmas bushes.”
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