Would have said that if garlic had anything wrong, including white rot, then it would fall outside of the requirements for human consumption. Cannot see a food safety officer saying "It's just white rot, it's OK to be sold and eaten."
Cannot recall seeing a nicely rotting garlic in a supermarket and it being sold. Which by previous post it is quite allowable to do.
My thoughts are simply that there will be will be more, and more rigorous, checks on the garlics up on Tesco's shelves then the ones in the garden centre. The supermarket has more to lose - customers, fines, money. Add in that the buyer that purchased the garlic could also lose their job and the grower would lose the contract. Also the second you push a garlic clove in the ground all guarantees are lost immaterial of source.
I know that the supermarkets are often refered to as cutthroat but part of that means they cannot buy an sell substandard food even if just for the bad publicity it generates. How many of the local independant garden centres are now owned by the major ones? Everyone within 15 miles of me are all Wyvale. Aren't these also in the same business as supermarkets? They all look the same no matter which garden centre you visit. I think Wyvale are now renaming they centres back to "local" names, this just hides that they are part of a big group.
People on here have asked about keeping seed to use in following years and no major outcry, usually just advice on how to do it, but a greater chance of infection being carried over.
Not saying there is no chance of infection, that exists for all sources no matter who and where they came from.
As white rot is a fungal disease it likes warm, wet conditions. Just what we have, not what the growers in Spain and the Med have. So does that mean we are safer getting and growing supermarket items then those from a producer from the UK?
How many posts of bad germination have been posted on the forum, I can recall several. Now those aren't all chance, many will be substandard (infected?) seed. Read other forums as well, seems not that uncommon. Infected manure has been a problem
If that had been a Tesco item can you imagine the amount of TV coverage it would have got? And the cases against them for loss of crops? Instead it hardly gets a mention and not a piece of action. White rot has been a problem this year, is it normal spread of the disease, or is some from infected onion sets and similar.
Finally my garlic came from the Garlic Farm.
And it had better grow well
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