There’s a big bag of seed garlic from China for sale at the garden store. Can it be eaten? Says not for consumption on the package. Why not?
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Might have treated with insecticide.
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How long would you have to wait before eating it? You end up eating it in the spring anyway.
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I would be cautious about eating any food grown or processed from china. My country is in a cold war with china and many products from china have been poisoned in the manufacturing process.
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I questioned a produce worker once over why the ornamental peppers he had for sale were labelled against eating and he said it was because they had been treated with a systemic fungicide/insecticide.
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Let me Google that for you.
‘Imported garlic is often grown in sewage water and human sewage is specifically used as an inexpensive fertilizer It is then sprayed with chemicals to prevent sprouting, bleached with chlorine to make it look white, and, by law, fumigated with methyl bromide’
This is likely how it works-
Chinese Garlic Farmer to Chinese Govt-- we grew all of this in human and animal feces and used chemicals just like you wanted us to for the Americans.
Chinese Govt- Very nice job. We buy it all!!
Chinese Govt to US importer- Hi we have cheap garlic for sale.
US importer- Very nice job. We buy it all!!!
US citizen- Finds cheap garlic at hardware store with warning labels… Wow i gotta tell everybody about this deal i found.
Random guy on niche forum- Hey did you notice that that same store also sells big bags of cheap trail mix?
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Verrry well put
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To be honest I won’t even buy Chinese grown garlic that’s meant for human consumption, and go to great lengths to avoid it. So for me…definitely not.
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I go to great lengths to avoid Chinese produced foods as well.
Locally produced (expensive) seed garlic has the same warning.
Sounds like no one in the forum knows the answer, and a couple of ignorant ones as well.
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The answer at least in the United States is that the production of it does not meet the standard for producing food for human consumption. That could be anything from the way it is stored, what is tested and how often, water quality, to the standards for worker hygiene. It is more expensive and time consuming (generally speaking) to meet these criteria.
https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-modernization-act-fsma/fsma-final-rule-produce-safety
That is the answer in the United States, and here is the full text of the rule:
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few years back I read an article which mentioned garlic in china is grown using manure from human excrement and have workers peel the cloves in exploitative conditions. I can’t tell if its true or real.
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Sorry, I don’t know nothing about pesticides besides that they are poison.
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This is interesting, because with garlic you do end up eating that exact same bulb 8 months later, after it’s been covered with dirt and manure. The only different potential danger I can imagine from such pre-planting seed garlic is if it was treated with ag chemicals that lose potency during the 8 months inground.
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Not exactly accurate? You plant each individual clove of garlic and then each of those sprouts and grows an entire new bulb. You’re not eating the seed bulb, you’re eating the new bulb it grows. And yes, after months in your soil, pretty much everything that would’ve been on or even in those original cloves has been washed away or metabolized by the plant as it absorbs the energy stored in the clove you planted and then creates a new bulb using your soil, nutrients, and sunlight.
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I wonder if heavy metals etc are also cleansed?
I occasionally listen to my old Iron Butterfly album.
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that wouldnt work @Richard- youd need some Black Sabbath at least. And a little squirt of dish soap
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In The Garden of Eden- Iron Butterfly
After a meal of seed garlic, seed potatoes, onion sets and magic mushooms… he sang…
In A Gadda Da Vida…
Now u know…The Rest of the Story. 
yeah, most of ‘em are coprophages. you might even be able to grow them right in the septage slurry with the seed garlic
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I think your man Ozzy may have forgotten to ask what happens when you mix seed garlic and elderberry seeds… some say it may make you ‘Paranoid’.
may be something to that heavy metal theory.
Do you think i could make some Ram Jam? Im gonna call my elderberry seed and garlic seed jam ‘Black Betty’ 
