From Anne Sweeney, Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK
With reference to your feature on the extinction of microbes, one thing has increasingly concerned me. The fruit and vegetables I grow on my allotment decay very differently from the same varieties purchased at a supermarket(15 April, p 46).
Perhaps the time has come for serious research into whether the globalisation of food products, along with whatever is being done to prevent them decaying naturally, is having a potentially catastrophic affect on microbes worldwide. I seriously worry about what happens when foods that don’t rot quickly and naturally, especially imported products, are turned into compost and added to the soil.
