Conservative MEP Julie Girling is calling on people celebrating the Chinese New Year of the rabbit on Thursday to forego the popular Chinese lanterns, which are responsible for injuries among children and deaths among livestock.
The lanterns, which float into the air by lighting a candle inside them, have become the bane of livestock farmers’ lives. The candle, which can drift significant distances, poses a fire hazard to dry crops in the summer, and there are several examples of the wire frame being ingested by livestock, causing their stomachs to rupture.
Sky lanterns have already been banned in Australia and Germany following separate fires which were thought to have been started by stray lanterns, one of which killed a ten year old boy.
Mrs Girling has asked the European Commission whether it intends to ask national governments to reconsider the sale of the lanterns, or to make people more aware of the dangers posed by them. In response, the commission said that it was continuing to discuss the matter under the auspices of RAPEX, the EU’s rapid alert system for dangerous products. However, the only advice that the commission could offer was for farmers to fit ’magnets in cattle stomachs’.
Mrs Girling said:
"Chinese lanterns are very pretty but they are also a dangerous menace.
"We are talking about a completely uncontrollable floating flame which can land anywhere - in somebody’s hedge, on a thatched roof or in a field of hay.
"I would like to see a Europe-wide review of these lanterns so that the possibility of a ban is seriously considered by the UK government. The suggestion from the commission that cows should have magnets fitted in their stomachs is absolutely ridiculous. Farmers have enough problems to contend with without a plague of fire and wire falling from the sky.
"I urge people to think about the potential consequences if they intend to let off these lanterns to celebrate Chinese New Year this Thursday.
"Do we need to wait for a person to be killed in the UK before we act?"
