The world’s biggest greenhouse was closed to visitors yesterday while an “anti-bug” spray took place. Horticulturists at the tourist attraction in Cornwall were following guidelines from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.The 787ft by 360ft biome, built on the site of a former clay pit near St Austell, houses more than 1,000 species of plants. Misters and waterfalls keep the air moist for plants from Malaysia, west Africa and the Amazon. Temperatures inside the giant greenhouse can reach 35C (95F).Dave Meneer, the Eden Project’s marketing director, said the cleaning process should clear the biome of white flies, aphids and mealy bugs. “Most greenhouses have these bugs, but just not on our scale.

If we can clear it completely now we can be less aggressive in future.”From April onwards new species of insects will be deliberately introduced to the biome to keep the bug population under control. Mr Meneer said birds and geckos would then be brought in to complete a natural bug-control cycle. “With a bit of luck they will keep everything in balance,” he said.Visitors to the Eden Project are to be charged half price on dates when the Humid Tropics Biome is closed. Extra attractions will be provided in the Warm Temperate Biome.. Colonel Sanders may claim it tastes finger-lickin’ good, but Kentucky Fried Chicken is produced using animal welfare standards that are unacceptable, an animal rights group claims today. It also wants the forced rapid growth of chickens to be phased
out, more space for each bird, and “minimal enhancements” to the
birds’ living conditions, such as sheltered areas and perches to provide
them with some semblance of their natural environment.

It also calls for automated chicken-catching to reduce the high incidence of
bruising, broken bones and stress associated with catching the chickens by
hand.

Dawn Carr, director of Peta Europe, said: “KFC is the world’s largest
killer of chickens, and as such has a responsibility to treat these birds
humanely. Nearly 800 million chickens are killed every year in the cruellest
ways imaginable.

Among the aspects of “external relations” on the conference agenda were relations with lobby organisations (such as Amnesty), but also with the media. Its homogeneity may derive less from recruitment policies than from service ethos: even if it does not recruit in its image, it soon whips its new entrants into shape.If it has to talk to outsiders, then the Dip Corps prefers to talk to those of like mind. Even if the Dip Corps becomes visually more diverse, however, as current recruitment policies suggest that it should, there is no guarantee that this will make it more open or philosophically diverse. There were precious few women, and I could not spot anyone from an ethnic minority.

And the massed ranks of ambassadors, as seen yesterday from the gallery of the Churchill auditorium, presented a picture that was very far from diversity. Diplomats gain expert knowledge about far-flung places that they seem reluctant to impart to non-diplomats, except confidentially and unattributably, and even then for a purpose.The Dip Corps is sensitive about being seen as male, upper-class and Oxbridge. Elsewhere, though, conditions are barely adequate for the job. Diplomats live in perpetual fear that their lifestyle will be “exposed” as lavish – and in some places, it is. You have only to watch “our man” at the United Nations in action to receive a lesson in how professional diplomacy should be conducted and why it is necessary.Yet the Dip Corps keeps its world far more closed than it needs to be. The Diplomatic Corps is intellectually more than capable of presenting its case. And diplomats probably have less to fear than most public servants from more public exposure, especially now.