Not for dinner: Why Belgium has warned against eating Christmas trees

Don’t eat your Christmas tree. Belgium’s food agency has issued a bizarre warning urging people not to have conifers on their menu as the festive season ends.

The message from Belgium’s Federal Food Agency (FASFC) came on Tuesday (January 7) after the city of Ghent posted ways for recycling Christmas trees, including eating them to reduce waste.

Let’s take a closer look.

Christmas trees for dinner?

Last week, the local council in Ghent launched a campaign giving tips for recycling Christmas trees after the holiday season.

As per Politico, one of the suggested ways was to make soup from pine needles, inspired by a traditional Scandinavian dish. It asked people to pick, blanch and dry needles to make flavoured butter.

“In Scandinavia, they have been doing it for a long time: picking the needles from the branches, briefly immersing them in boiling water, pouring them through a sieve and drying them on a clean cloth,” Ghent’s local council said in a post on its website.

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“Once the needles are dry, you can make delicious spruce needle butter with them for bread or toast”.

It later added a note, saying that “not all Christmas trees are edible”.

“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.

Belgium’s food agency reacts

Belgium’s food agency, the Federal Food Agency (FASFC), Tuesday warned people against turning their Christmas trees into recipes.

“Christmas trees are not destined to enter the food chain,” it said in a statement, as per AFP.
The agency pointed out that most trees cultivated for the season are heavily treated with pesticides and other chemicals, making them unsafe to be served in meals.

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As per Politico, FASFC spokesperson Hélène Bonte said, “To avoid issues with emerging woolly aphids, Christmas trees are often treated intensively.” Woolly aphids are sap-sucking insects found in plants that can cause and spread plant diseases.

“For this reason alone, the FASFC cannot agree with such initiatives,” she added.

Bonte also underlined the difference between commercially grown Christmas trees and the pines that grow naturally and are 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 was quoted as saying by Politico.

The FASFC emphasised that eating Christmas trees is unsafe.

“What’s more, there is no easy way for consumers to tell if Christmas trees have been treated with flame retardant — and not knowing that could have serious, even fatal consequences,” the agency said in a statement.

“There is no way to ensure that eating Christmas trees is safe - either for people or animals”.
“In short, there are many reasons not to promote nor encourage the re-use of Christmas trees in the food chain,” it added.

Ghent’s local council has since taken down a post on its Facebook page promoting eating Christmas trees. It has also tweaked the headline of the post on its website from “Eat your Christmas tree” to “Scandinavians eat their Christmas trees”.

With input from agencies