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Belgium’s Federal Food Agency (FASFC) issued a warning Tuesday against eating Christmas trees after the city of Ghent recommended that people do so to cut back on waste.
“Christmas trees are not meant to end up in the food chain,” FASFC spokesperson Hélène Bonte said Tuesday.
According to the agency, most ornamental Christmas trees are heavily treated with pesticides and other chemicals to preserve their appearance and protect them from pests, rendering them unsafe for food consumption.
“To avoid issues with emerging woolly aphids, Christmas trees are often treated intensively,” said Bonte. (Woolly aphids are small sap-sucking insects often found on plants and capable of causing and spreading plant diseases.) “For this reason alone, the FASFC cannot agree with such initiatives,” she added.
The warning comes after the city of Ghent’s local council launched a campaign last Thursday promoting several ways to recycle Christmas trees after the holiday season. One of the suggestions included making soup from pine needles, inspired by a traditional Scandinavian recipe.
“Your Christmas tree is edible as long as it is not yew, and your tree has not been treated with a fire-resistant spray,” Ghent Climate City wrote in a social media post.
According to FASFC, however, this is an unsafe practice, as it’s not easily possible for consumers to determine if Christmas trees have been treated with flame retardants. “The consumption of the pine species ‘yew’ can have serious, even fatal, consequences,” warned Bonte.
Bonte also explained there is a difference between commercially grown Christmas trees and the naturally grown pines traditionally used in certain Nordic recipes.
“The needles of pines from unspoiled nature in northern countries are completely different from those of trees cultivated for Christmas,” she said.
