Poisonous Courgettes.

[HansUrbancka]

A few days ago I heard a report on the Radio about people being Poisoned by eating Courgettes.

It appears home grown Courgettes have been affected by high levels of cucurbitacins with folk getting very unpleasant illness; which has been known in rare cases to be fatal.

I don't know if this has been mentioned already in Answerbank, so I am giving a link to an article on the matter :-

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8529641/Mother-38-rushed-hospital-poisoned-courgettes-grew-lockdown.html

Hans.

[Old_Geezer]

If you can't trust big name seed distributors who can you trust ?

[Buenchico]

For anyone who struggles with all the ads on the Daily Wail website, here's a similar story from Auntie Beeb:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-53402497

[Atheist]

OG; on the whole you can trust people who sell products which are safe nearly all the time. Everyone can make a mistake.

[Old_Geezer]

I'd rather trust those whose record on mistakes doesn't show poisoning their clients any of the time. Really they need taking to task unless they can show that they used best endeavours to avoid the issue.

[Atheist]

OG; I'm sure they'll do their best to reassure the public and to make sure it doesn't happen again. I love growing and eating courgettes and I'll continue to do so, but I'll be careful to avoid any that have a bitter taste. I've never had problems in the past.

[pastafreak]

From Chris's link...
//On its website Mr Fothergill's said it had traced the seeds to a grower "with the most meticulous growing and husbandry routines".//
What more can the company do...particularly as the cause is a "naturally occurring compound"? Probably the very compound that causes some of us to dislike their taste.

[Old_Geezer]

It seems they didn't have something to prevent cross fertilisation. Would have thought that was basic.