We all love a good deal and it is this desire to save a few pennies which has seen Amazon – and other online market places – grow at such a rate over the last 20 years. The ease at which overseas sellers, particularly the Chinese manufacturers, can sell directly to UK consumers could be viewed as beneficial. Cheap products even if it means job losses at home plays well with many.
Initially it was the electronic and technology companies that made use of ecommerce but now it has exploded into all areas of consumerism and this brings dangers to British wildlife. The latest surge in marketing by Chinese and overseas suppliers into the UK is in the gardening section and this includes things like seeds for your garden. Here though lies a problem. Most consumers don’t realise that seeds bought into the country by reputable sellers are strictly controlled to prevent the import of species and diseases which could cause issues with British wildlife and crops.
The Chinese companies – and they are predominately Chinese – who market seeds directly to British consumers through platforms such as Amazon and ebay take no notice of these regulations and are a real threat to native wildlife and plants.
You do not know what you are buying when you buy from amazon and the way it is set up and run means, often, you do not know who you are buying from unless you look very closely. It is very easy for a new supplier to list against an established product and as the ‘buy box’ is regularly rotated you may have bought from a reputable UK buyer one week but the next week it could be from an unregulated Chinese supplier.
This means you never quite know what you are buying and you can see from many reviews where not even the correct seeds are being sent so you expect Brussel Sprouts and a few months later you have a crop of cabbage. You don’t get the nice packets of seeds you find in garden centres but you get a plastic bag with a sticker on it and nothing more. These may be bad enough from a consumer point of view but the real dangers lie in when you read of a review of people who opened packets of seed to find insects, bugs and eggs just waiting to escape into the local environment via your garden.
There has always been cases of horticultural imports bringing in insects or disease in the normal garden trade channels but these are few and are often picked up as they go through the chains of checks to prevent inadvertent imports of bio-hazards. When you buy online to save a few pennies on a packet of seeds these checks are not always put in place particularly when you choose to buy from an overseas supplier.
Just as with VAT and other tax the online marketplaces such as amazon makes no checks to see if suppliers are meeting good practice to reduce the spread of disease and pests. They make no checks to ensure that import regulations are adhered to and they make no checks about the reputation of the company or quality of supply. It really is a case of buyer beware.
In order to protect your local wildlife it really is important to ensure that if you do decide to buy seed online from one of these marketplaces such as Amazon you very carefully check who is the supplier of these seeds or bulbs or other plant products that could include soil containing eggs of pests or disease.
It is not good enough to see where the items are being dispatched from, many Chinese or overseas suppliers will use UK based fulfilment centres – such as Amazons own FBA service – where the items are stored in bulk and then dispatched from the UK as they are ordered. Other overseas suppliers will also use third-party agents in the UK to give the impression of being based in the country but their products would have been shipped in a mis-declared to avoid import restrictions on seeds and plant products.
If you choose to buy online then you need to choose carefully where you buy from and if you buy from a marketplace like Amazon you have to be particularly careful to ensure the supplier you buy from is a reputable UK one that abides by the laws and regulations in place to protect our wildlife and our farming industry.
