City recommended consumption Food safety authority in Belgium warns: don't eat your Christmas tree
Reindeer at Berlin Zoo eat an unused Christmas tree. However, according to a warning from the Belgian food authority, humans should not eat Christmas trees.
Image: Keystone
Elephants at Berlin Zoo also enjoy unused, unsprayed Christmas trees.
Image: Keystone
Reindeer at Berlin Zoo eat an unused Christmas tree. However, according to a warning from the Belgian food authority, humans should not eat Christmas trees.
Image: Keystone
Elephants at Berlin Zoo also enjoy unused, unsprayed Christmas trees.
Image: Keystone
"Eat your Christmas tree": The city of Ghent's unusual request to its residents at the end of the Christmas season has brought the food safety authority AFSCA in Belgium onto the scene.
08.01.2025, 02:08
08.01.2025, 05:58
SDA
No time? blue News summarizes for you
- The unusual request made by the city of Ghent to its residents to eat their Christmas trees at the end of the festive season has brought the food safety authority AFSCA in Belgium onto the scene.
- There is "no guarantee that Christmas trees are safe to eat, either by humans or animals", the authority declared.
- The authority cited the probable use of pesticides during cultivation and the difficult-to-detect use of flame retardants in Christmas trees as reasons for this.
There is "no guarantee that Christmas trees are safe for consumption by humans or animals", the authority explained on Tuesday. With regard to the probable use of pesticides during cultivation, the authority warned: "Do not eat your Christmas tree."
The background to the initiative in Ghent was less culinary aspects than a recycling recommendation: the website of the city in the northern Belgian region of Flanders, which is considered a stronghold of climate protectors, enthusiastically referred to examples from Scandinavia.
One suggestion was to peel, blanch and dry the needles in order to use them for the production of flavored butter, for example.
Pesticides and flame retardants
The AFSCA apparently didn't think much of the idea. "Christmas trees are not intended to enter the food chain," the authority said in a statement. There are many reasons "to neither promote nor support the reuse of Christmas trees in the food chain".
In addition to treatment with pesticides, the authority also cited the use of flame retardants in Christmas trees, which is difficult to detect. This could "even have fatal consequences", the authority warned.
The Ghent city council has apparently heeded the warning and revised the information on its website as a result. Now the headline no longer reads "Eat your Christmas tree", but "Scandinavians eat their Christmas trees".