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In Belgium, the city of Ghent invites residents to eat their Christmas tree and is cropped (illustrative image)
INTERNATIONAL – “Christmas trees are not meant to enter the food chain. » This unusual warning, to say the least, comes from the Belgian food safety agency, forced to reframe the city of Ghent this Tuesday, January 7, which suggested cooking recipes for recycling its tree.
A stronghold of environmentalists in Flanders, the municipality of Ghent stood out a few days ago on its website by inviting its residents to “eat their Christmas trees” in order to avoid waste. The town in northwestern Belgium explains that Scandinavians have the habit of drying fir needles to prepare, for example, a butter spread.
Questioned on the issue, the Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (Afsca) did not appreciate the initiative. “Nothing can guarantee the safe consumption of Christmas trees by both humans and animals”underlines this agency, due to the probable use of pesticides to cultivate these trees.
“Serious, even fatal consequences”
“In addition, it is also not (easily) possible for the consumer to know whether the Christmas trees have been treated with flame retardants and failure to know this can have serious or even fatal consequences”insists Afsca. “In summary, there are many reasons not to promote or encourage the reuse of Christmas trees in the food chain”.
Following this warning, Ghent partially modified its publication on its site. The town replaced its catchy title “Eat your Christmas tree” par “Scandinavians eat their Christmas trees”.
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