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EU To Ban Neonicotinoid Insecticides
PuceBaboon writes "The BBC is reporting that the EU has voted to ban pesticides containing neonicotinoids for at least two years, in an effort to isolate the cause of CCD (colony collapse disorder; the alarming disappearance of bees over recent years). Despite intense lobbying by the chemical companies, a 3-million signature petition helped swing the vote in favor of the ban."
I read that as "Neocon Insectoids."
Damn caribbean rum...
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
How cow, if that doesn't show the lawmakers which votes they won't be getting... I don't know what will.
US Take note, this has shown that even though Big Business is behind something, voters can say "No".
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I'm happy to see that this important decision was made based on sound science.
Or maybe it was made by weighing corporate lobbying against petition signing. That's probably fine too. After all, it's not like this was an important decision that should have been made based on sound science.
So were the scientists at the chemical companies right or were the 3 million people who signed a petition right? Did an emotional outcry of ignorance just stop the use of something harmless? Guess we'll know in a couple of years... maybe.
Cartel of chemical companies lobby for new draft legislation to improve agricultural efficiency in the EU with wonderfuloids.
Small print "We'll stop u slaves from having milk and honey if our lives depend on it."
Really? Despite intense lobbying by those whose best interests are at stake? Cry me a river.
Time will tell if it works. Then decisions can be revised. I'd also be interested to know if anyone has done a study of the effects of wireless communications on bees. Its interesting that the timing of CCD bee problems somewhat overlap with the massive take up of mobile phones and related supporting infrastructure not to mention Wifi and spread spectrum.
And possibly why slavery lasted so long in the US. Eventually it was force that brought the voting public to see logic and reasoning.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Although bees are endangered, they aren't the only ones pollinating.
Celebrate National Pollinator Week, June 17 - 23, 2013!
These hard-working animals help pollinate over 75% of our flowering plants, and nearly 75% of our crops. Often we may not notice the hummingbirds, bats, bees, beetles, butterflies, and flies that carry pollen from one plant to another as they collect nectar. Yet without them, wildlife would have fewer nutritious berries and seeds, and we would miss many fruits, vegetables, and nuts, like blueberries, squash, and almonds . . . not to mention chocolate and coffeeall of which depend on pollinators. . .
Pollinators, such as most bees and some birds, bats, and other insects, play a crucial role in flowering plant reproduction and in the production of most fruits and vegetables.
Examples of crops that are pollinated include apples, squash, and almonds. Without the assistance of pollinators, most plants cannot produce fruits and seeds. The fruits and seeds of flowering plants are an important food source for people and wildlife. Some of the seeds that are not eaten will eventually produce new plants, helping to maintain the plant population.
In the United States pollination by honey bees directly or indirectly (e.g., pollination required to produce seeds for the crop) contributed to over $19 billion of crops in 2010. Pollination by other insect pollinators contributed to nearly $10 billion of crops in 2010. . . more
Wild Bees Are Good For Crops, But Crops Are Bad For Bees
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
This class of pesticides will still be permitted (in most countries) for use on crops that bees have no interest in.
These pesticides are extremely effective and yet very benign (as long as you're not a bee). It would be unfortunate if they were entirely banned.
So neonicintinoids of unknown bee toxicity and better cost effectiveness are going to be replaced by older pesticides of unknown bee toxicity and worse cost effectiveness.
Quite an experiment they are embarking on.
I don't think this will be over any time soon.
that if they vote no and allow the issue to get worse, that money may not matter because everyone will be dead.
Bees are serious fucking business.
It did however force the southern US states to industrialize agriculture, which provided a steady revenue stream for northern manufacturers.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/7778401/Mobile-phones-responsible-for-disappearance-of-honey-bee.html
Just a theory with some scientific data to back it up - but go ahead and ban the colour blue.
In case you didn't know, these "neo-nicotinoid" insectides are basically engineered substitutes for nicotine that affect insects more than people (as opposed to the normal nicotine that affects people more than insects). As I understand it, if an insect eats get too much of this chemical, their nervous systems basically stop working (it overloads certiain receptors so they stop propogating signals), and the insects become paralyzed and eventually they die. Apparently it doesn't get past the blood-brain barrier on most vertibrates, so it isn't too toxic to us (or so they say)...
Typically bees don't eat plants, so in theory they are affected less by this, but it seems plausible to me that bees would be affect by this as well as I imagine insectides cannot be applied perfectly, and sustained exposure can't be a good thing.
I have no idea how low-level exposure would affect a bee, but given how nicotine exposure affects humans, maybe there's something there...
At least one site seems to say that the single biggest contributor is a parasitic mite and a virus that it spreads.
The linked BBC article labels those as "merely" stress factors. It mentions - at the very end of the article, mind - that laboratory studies show that the compounds can do harm to bees ... but haven't been shown under field conditions. They COULD be much like the rats given artificial sweetener in order to help the market for the next artificial sweetener. Or, they could be spot on. (Hey, that's what Science is for, after all. Answering questions and creating new ones.)
It also quotes a Greenpeace activist as saying (about Monday's vote) "makes it crystal clear that there is overwhelming scientific, political and public support for a ban." ... I didn't know votes affected science. I guess you learn something new every day.
"Limited occurrences resembling CCD have been documented as early as 1869 and this set of symptoms has, in the past several decades, been given many different names (disappearing disease, spring dwindle, May disease, autumn collapse, and fall dwindle disease)" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder
The science behind this decision seems awfully shaky!
What if you were a mega-corporation with unlimited funding, access to the brightest researchers in bio-engineering and you were trying to corner the world's food supply.
You'd start by controlling agriculture; you'd develop seeds that would only germinate once, for example, to slowly drive farmers out of business.
Next, you'd want to definitively stop people from producing food on their own, so you'd develop an artificial means of pollenisation and then develop something like say a virus or bacteria or even a toxic compound that you'd release into the environment to get rid of the top natural pollinators so the only crops that could grow would be under your control.
Of course no corporation would ever do something like that, no one is that evil, right?
Still, it makes a nice plot for an eventual James Bond or other science-fiction...
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
I do not see why the burden of proof that massive dissemination of poison is harmful should be with the public.
IMO those who manufacture and sell this stuff have to prove that it does not destroy our ecosystem.
I know, the stuff has been at some point been certified, but I think that every company that manufactures a product has an obligation to monitor if it is harmful even after it appears on the market. You simply can not determine the long term impact of wide use on the environment with a handful of studies,
p.
Without order, nothing can exist. Without chaos, nothing can be created.
Neoconservatives are pretty hawkish on foreign policy, many having family connections to those who perished in the camps, and the hawkishness is driven by the historical view "If only someone had stood up to German militarism early on before it was impossible to resist."
Your remarks of what "we could all use a good helping of in this country" -- wasn't an industrial insecticide gas already tried as a means of silencing those of the "wrong" politics and "wrong" ethnicity?
Does a person know how certain remarks can be interpreted, and do people "want to go there"? If a person does "want to go there", my own ethnicity was "in whose name" many terrible, terrible things were done, and I think I need to find another place besides Slashdot to "hang out."
And yes, I am posting anonymously and I am a coward for it.
With the exception of the recent bond (I've not seen the latest one) those movies are never realistic. Adult cartoon with real actors; although, some of them make cartoons look realistic.
The real super villains are in groups where the loss of the leader doesn't change things a whole lot. The plot is complex and the crimes much more evil. The Bond about controlling the water supply was spot on and is an exception. If they want to continue into gritty reality they'll look at Monsanto and the private spy industry with mercenaries.
Is the compound persistent? If it is, then it may still harm bees even after two years of ban, leading to the conclusion that it was innocent.
For the curious, this is a neonicotinoid insecticide:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid
It is neonicotinoid because it resembles nicotine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine
Which is why some organic pesticide tea recipes call for steeping plug chewing tobacco in water and using that extract on your plants.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I mean, it's always been about the birds and the bees hasn't it?
As interesting as that linked story was, I didn't see your capsule summary in it. The story talks about many factors, about two products that bees find in nature that turn on their natural defenses (but are not found in nectar). Quoting from the story: "People would love to have the one solution, but the problems is it really does seem like itâ(TM)s a combination of factors". I'd encourage people to read the story themselves.
I come here for the love
The problem with this banning is that they _think_ these toxins cause the dying-out of the bees. Actually there are plenty of regions where they use them and they didn't see a decrease in bee population. In such regions this banning could mean a lot of problems, e.g. the need to find and switch to some other chemicals which could bring some other unforeseen problems - since the one banned is used for a long time, most effects and side-effects are failry known. But, since they don't really have a clue what causes the bees dying, this banning might just simply have no effect, only cause problems. They might say they're just banning it temporarily for seeing what happens, but it's not that easy when this decision can effect whole countries' agriculture.
Also, I could bet on these 3 million signatures come mostly from green-fanatic city-dwellers who know nothing about bees, or agriculture, or agriculturural economics. They'd probably vote for banning all kinds of chemicals, until the point when food prices hike to the sky or they all die of hunger.
Well, at this point, we can only wait and see.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Question to beekeepers: Is feeding HFCS/fructose to bees considered good practice? Sounds fishy to me, to feed bees a completely different sugar in place of glucose.
Ooops.
Fire is caused by a combination of factors: oxygen, heat and fuel.
Take ANY ONE OF THEM away and the fire goes out.
Despite being due to "a combination of factors".
No, it's not shaky at all, if you really knew what you were talking about - not some silly reports from 1869 and Wikipedia(!) The modern chemicals we're talking about didn't exist in 1869, things have changed and we're seeing it in nature and the lab. I'd rather trust the actual researchers working on this than your "skepticism"...
I am probably a crummy beekeeper but I lost 7 of 8 hives this winter. The US National hive loss survey ends today April 30th (see Beeinformed.com). I see they managed to announce this EU decision before the US survey is reported. Neonicotinoids are applied to each kernal of GMO corn planted - about 80 million acres in the US. The dose on a single kernel is sufficient to kill (not stun but kill) 50,000 to 70,000 honeybees. The poison (a neurotoxin) is systemic and absorbed by the corn plant from the seed coating. It is in the soil. The pollen of the toxic corn plant is carried back to the hive to make a food for the young bee larva. They call it bee bread and it is fed to the developing bees. Pollen is stored in the hive like honey for long periods of time confounding short studies. A clean well controlled study is not easy to perform. Weather, wind, nature all create variables suggesting long studies. 2 years?
I see the bees confused and unproductive. They do not do their tasks well. The are infected with opportunistic diseases that are normally not fatal. A single confused queen can doom a hive to a slow death spiral.
It is a messy and alarming situation.
Europeans are lazy gits; we can't be arsed to clamber around in our apple trees all spring(*), wielding a small brush.
Even though it would be the perfect cure for our high unemployment rates!
(* well, *I* can't be arsed; besides, it's a small tree and I'm afraid it would break if I climbed in it).
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
being utilized here:
Controversial Pesticide Linked to Bee Collapse
Citations: “Neonicotinoid Pesticide Reduces Bumble Bee Colony Growth and Queen Production.” By Penelope R. Whitehorn, Stephanie O’Connor, Felix L. Wackers, Dave Goulson. Science, Vol. 335 No. 6076, March 30, 2012.
Captcha: rainbow
I wholeheartedly agree with the EU decision. The honeybee is descended from a native European insect and is an important part of Old World ecosystems.
However, in the USA, European honeybees are imported domestic livestock, and Africanized honeybees are invasive pests.
See, despite all the hysteria, North America wasn't a vast unpopulated desert wasteland before the importation of honeybees. There are lots of native pollinators here, at least in places where humans haven't completely soaked the land and air with toxins yet.
Most major American crops (such as maize, the American corn) do not require imported pollinators to thrive. In fact all cereal crops (maize, rice, rye, wheat, etc.) and most trees are wind pollinated, needing no insect pollinators at all.
So the EU is going to try one thing for two years and, if nothing happens, maybe take another two years to try something else? We're not going to try to suppress the fungus? Not going to try limiting the harvest of royal jelly and propolis? I bet you that in two years, regardless of the results, the ban will be made permanent because the corporations who had replacement pesticides ready will be rolling in dough-- and sending lots of it to the bureaucrats.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Subject line says it all.
Bees are also not the only insects at risk.
Use of herbicides/insecticides is also linked to the decline in the butterfly population. While butterflies aren't quite as industrious pollinators as bees, they're certainly valuable to the ecosystem.
I'd imagine there are lots of others besides the bees and butterflies at stake too.