Little seeds of horrors?

Setting up bird feeders could mean sowing sorrows for local farmers–not to mention unwanted weeds.
With the popularity of bird feeding increasing, concerns over what exactly is in bird seed have been raised as tons of the stuff get bought and spread on the ground every winter.
Rudy Sinninghe, a director of the Rainy River Federation of Agriculture, said the big problem lies with people who are unfamiliar with plant genealogy.
“The average joe doesn’t know what is a weed,” he said. “I’ve checked some of the bird seed around. Some of the seed have thistles in it.”
Sinninghe also wondered if companies had to list every kind of seed they put in their product.
Local farm businessman Larry Lamb of Purity Seeds said finding unwanted seed in bird seed used to be a big problem, with many bags of bird feed being comprised of seed cleanings.
But he added the problem wasn’t as “prevalent” as it used to be.
“Agriculture Canada should be monitoring that kind of thing,” he said.
But Stan Kirkland, with Agriculture Canada’s office in Winnipeg, said bird seed isn’t regulated by his ministry.
“We have a feeds act [monitoring seed] but pleasure birds are not under livestock,” he noted.
Federal seed acts don’t weed out bad seeds, either, he said, since bird seed isn’t bought for the purpose of planting and growing things out.
“It’s not unusual for the provincial government to regulate noxious weeds,” Kirkland said, though he was uncertain what rules have been applied by Ontario.
Industry Canada and Consumer Products should insist all varieties of seeds be labelled on the bag before it could be sold in Canada, Kirkland added.
Check the label on your bird seed bag if you’re worried what kind of seed is being thrown on the ground for birds.
And if you’re an “average joe” who isn’t familiar with what’s a weed, move away from the smaller bird seed varieties and stick with the larger, black sunflower seed.