Contaminated manure problems

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Contaminated Manure

We were affected with contaminated manure last year and so I started to post as much information as I could find on my website.

Manure Menu

The worrying thing is that there hasn't been sufficient publicity about the problem and people are still purchasing manure unaware of the need for caution. It also seems that even farmers and stable owners are unaware of the issues relating to supply of manure where aminopyralid has been introduced to the supply chain and are continuing to supply affected manure.
Click here

It also seems that the licence for using aminpoyralid products is under consdieration for reinstatement see Minutes of ACP 337 held on 12 May 2009

We need gardening magazines such as Grow Your Own to keep issuing warnings to try and save gardeners a lot of heartache.

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Phill
Someone on our site has a similar problem where his potatoes look exactly as ours that were contaminated last year did. He hadn't used anything on his soil other than water.

I sent photos to the RHS and they agreed that it looked like herbicide contamination. They said if the potatoes were stored or chitted in the same place as where the herbicide was stored that they could be affected by vapours coming from the herbicide.

Another point is that some amateur lawn preparations contain a similar hormonal herbiced called clopyralid - any chance lawn clippings from treated areas could have been used near your potatoes.

Regarding poultry manure - if chickens browse on areas treated with the herbicide or have hay bedding that was treated with the herbicide then I guess it is possible that it could be contamiated as the problem is from the treated grass. I haven't heard of anyone reporting this as a source though.

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is there a picture of what the leaves look like to help people identify this?

e lots of photos of last year's contaminated crops on my web page click here