How Did It Happen

How did it happen. Ask how this damaging diseases spread through Europe might have been curtailed and you’ll open up a can of worms that raises troubling questions about the nature of free trade and its potentially devastating consequences for national plant biosecurity. Prof Clive Brasier, the highly regarded British plant pathologist specialising in tree diseases, neatly summed up the dilemma by describing it as trade at any cost, arguing that the UK’s independent plant health controls have been sacrificed in the interests of EU membership. Pointing to the dramatic increases in the frequency of damaging plant pathogen importations over the past decade, he suggested that the UK is now in danger of losing much of its historic tree and forest heritage. His blunt conclusion was that the European plant security “door” is, quite simply, off its hinges.

Fionnuala Fallon Irish Times. Saturday, October 13, 2012.

http://www.monbiot.com/2012/10/29/what-were-you-thinking/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/oct/12/wildlife-ash-tree-die-back