A study by Greenpeace of Chinese herbs has found many contain illegal and hazardous chemicals. Once growing in forests and only picked at certain times of the year, Chinese herbs are now grown on an industrial scale and reliant on the use of pesticides. Greenpeace bought herb samples from a handful of renowned herb growing regions in China. They also purchased samples of herbal medicine from nine different cities (including Hong Kong) and from nine companies’ for pesticide testing.
The results of Greenpeace’s investigation reveal the herbs contained a cocktail of pesticide residues. Many of these pesticides are illegal in China or classified as ‘highly hazardous’ or ‘extremely hazardous’ by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The report concluded that exposure to pesticides via food consumption poses a significant risk to health, namely the possibility of bioaccumulation within the body. Chronic pesticide poisoning may even lead to learning difficulties, hormone disruption and reproductive abnormalities.
You can read the full Greenpeace report here
Greenpeace East Asia is urging the Chinese government to impose stricter supervision and control of illegal pesticides, provide clear pesticides reduction timelines and commit to a road map to fully phase out chemical pesticides in agriculture.
Additionally, they call on the Chinese authorities to divert financial funding towards more ecological farming practices and are campaiging to raise global awareness and strive towards a pesticide-free future. Greenpeace hope that by doing so we can heal Chinese herbs. Greenpeace East Asia is also calling on the Chinese herb companies to publicly disclose all pesticides used in the production of their products and to provide a timeline aimed at reducing their usage.
After starting my garden maintenance and landscaping business in 1984 and running it for 21 years I decided I needed a change of direction (probably a mid life crisis, no seriously! :-0) Together with my family, wife Donna, Son Henry and Daughter Fleur (not forgetting Hector the Black Labrador) I moved to France in search of an old farmhouse to renovate. In the interim period whilst waiting for the contract to go through I started writing a blog. Initially just to keep a diary for family and friends to keep up with our progress if they wished but then it occurred to me that there isn’t a real time watcher of the landscape industry in the UK. I didn’t want to waste my experience and experiences so I decided I could put all of this Juice to good use so I started Landscape Juice.
