Clarification

 In an article in the Leicester Mercury titled ‘Campaigners celebrate as pesticide use ended’ published on February 27^th 2026 the Leicester Mercury quoted a spokesperson for Leicester City Council who apparently had said that ‘We use glyphosate-based products that are non-toxic to humans and animals and controlled droplet applicators for targeted spraying’.

We were concerned about this statement as this was never mentioned in our meeting with Leicester City Council as there are no glyphosate-based products that are non-toxic. Any products that use glyphosate are obviously toxic as glyphosate is a poison and is toxic as we mentioned further on in the press release which we had sent to the Leicester Mercury;- ‘The journal article that had previously been used to claim that glyphosate was safe was retracted by the publisher last year, because they discovered the company that makes glyphosate had been involved in the research’.

We contacted Leicester City Council to ask who the spokesperson was that had made the comment but they did not know. We then contacted the Leicester Mercury about their article and the statement which had been made by ‘a spokesperson for the City Council’.  Eventually it was established by the Mercury that they hadn’t actually spoken to a spokesperson at the Council but had taken an out-of-date statement from Leicester City’s Council website and used that in the article.

We asked the Leicester Mercury to print a ‘Clarification’ which they did on Friday May 29^th 2026 but unfortunately, they still did not make it clear where the statement came from - their clarification  article read:-

‘As set out in the article, a new study discovered that glyphosate is indeed a toxic substance, and the council subsequently agreed to cease its use in children’s play areas as a result.’  

So it still wasn’t actually transparent that they took information from a Council website and didn’t actually speak to anyone from the Council. – We just thought we should clarify that information. 

We would also like to mention that Leicester City Council are still spraying the rest of the parks with glyphosate which is a toxic poison to humans, animals including dogs, insects as well as to the ‘weeds’ which the Council are trying to kill. 

To encourage Leicester City Council to stop using glyphosate in our parks and green spaces we want to show them that Leicester’s gardeners can mange without pesticides so have created a gardener’s pledge which we would love you to sign Pledge to go pesticide-free.

It’s not too late to make a spring resolution for your garden for 2026. And please do sign even if you’ve been gardening organically for a long time. We are planning to use the postcodes (without linking them to people’s names) to create a map of pesticide-free gardens across the city. Please help!

Melanie Wakley