Grow your apples indoors

Geoffrey Hopton at Worcester based solicitors, Morton Fisher says the latest Food Standards Agency consultation is "just daft".

Does growing apples indoors sound daft? Not just daft, but not very popular either if the public’s aversion to poly tunnels remains a major issue.

But why even consider it? Well, it is that Food Standards Agency again. They are in the throes of a consultation exercise in which they are proposing that all livestock should be banned from the Nation’s orchards because the fruit could be contaminated by their faeces.

Why all of a sudden should this be? Cattle and sheep have roamed our orchards for hundreds of years and has it ever been an issue? What about all the wild animals who regularly pass through these orchards, rabbits, hedgehogs, foxes, badgers and several species of deer to name but a few?

It is about as absurd as saying that cooks and kitchen workers may not go to the lavatory for the entire length of their shifts.

What is wrong with washing your hands or for that matter washing the fruit?

The future of our much loved West Midlands orchards must be at risk. Livestock are natural lawn mowers and if further labour costs are added to an already profitless crop other uses will be found for our orchards.

We are so obsessed with hygiene today that every new health regulation reduces a little more the effectiveness of our immune systems. The old wives, and they knew a thing or two, always said," a little dirt don’t do no harm".

Just plain daft isn’t it?