Food, Farming, Fairness.
About us
Find out more about Wicked Leeks and our publisher, organic veg box company Riverford.
Get in touch
Are you farmer, producer or journalist with a story to share? Drop us a line here.
![Those who keep chickens and ducks in their gardens understand the value in their hard work: the supply of wholesome eggs landing on their doorstep. These really are ‘happy’ chickens; and the free-range, shop-bought eggs claiming as much have nothing on these eggs, either (and my word… the omelettes!).
Sam Hammond is one such garden egg evangelist. So imagine the horror when a letter from the local council arrived through the letterbox, explaining that the eggs she and her children have been enjoying for a decade and a half may be poisonous due to the presence of PFAS, or so-called ‘forever chemicals’.
“I am angry and worried. I feel quite sick by it,” said Hammond in an interview with ENDS Report, a website dedicated to environmental policy and regulation, last week. “My daughter is 16 now – she was two when we got the chickens. We should be offered blood tests to see how much [PFAS] is in our bodies. There needs to be a more thorough investigation into what poisons are in my own backyard,” she added.
It is a fair point. But scratch beneath the surface and the problems of ‘poisons’ in Hammond’s and her neighbours’ gardens point to a far wider challenge for our food production, not to mention a risk to our health.
Hammond is one of a number of residents who live on the boundary of the AGC Chemicals factory, in Lancashire, which is currently the subject of a contaminated land investigation by the Environment Agency and Wyre Council under Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act.
Read the full feature on Wicked Leeks.](https://wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)