Seed company Germinal Ireland has issued a recall of all its wildflower seed mixes following the discovery of blackgrass contamination – and is urging customers to return the mixes, which will be refunded.
The company stressed that it is taking the matter extremely seriously, adding that it has conformed with EU rules and regulations at all times.
The firm is temporarily halting the sale of wildflower mixes until the issue is fully resolved.
Speaking to Agriland about the move, Germinal sales and production manager Jim Gibbons explained:
“There was an issue with the pollinator mix we supplied last year, an issue with contamination of blackgrass seed.
“That seed was processed and mixed outside the jurisdiction. At all times Germinal conformed to EU laws and norms and standards. There was no law broken. We conformed to all rules and regulations.
“We are taking this matter very, very seriously – we recognise that blackgrass is a noxious weed and we don’t want to have anything to do with introducing it to Ireland.
“Because of that we are taking a number of actions; we are recalling any product we have in the system at the minute and we’re asking customers to send back any product or pallet available for collection and we will take it back and refund them,” Gibbons said.
“We are also stopping the sale of wildflower mixes at the moment until we can be absolutely 100% certain that there are no issues going forward.
“All customers who purchased stock off us are getting an email today.”
They will also receive a phone call about the matter in the coming days to make them aware, the Germinal representative added.
“We have four products of wildflower seeds and they’re being replaced. The wildflower component of those products is the one we can’t be certain of.”