Tom's Corner

In June of 2014 the Obama White House issued a Presidential Memorandum calling for a “federal strategy to promote the health of boney bees and other pollinators.” This was to have been completed by December of 2014. On May 19, 2015, five months late, the Pollinator Health Task Force Report was issued, and despite the delay is a very disappointing work product.

The EPA and USDA were put in charge of this Task Force Report, and of course critics raised the question of putting the foxes in charge of the chicken house. Well, the foxes have chicken feathers on their breath. The evidence is that we may be experiencing the most massive poisoning of the environment ever and the Task Force has conveniently avoided this, to the delight of the chemical companies.

Read the following articles and form your own opinions. Google the subject on the internet and investigate on your own if you need more.

USDA, Honey Bee Health Action Plan

White House makes bid to save honeybees

White House plan to protect bees aims high but falls short

Top Five Takeaways from the White House Pollinator Health Task Force announcement

3 problems with Obama’s plan to save the bees

In a startling about-face, the EPA issued this report titled,Benefits of Neonicotinoid Seed Treatments to Soybean Production

In the abstract the EPA states that the Biological and Economic Analysis Division (BEAD) “concludes that these seed treatments provide negligible overall benefits to soybean production in most situations.”

The real test will be whether the EPA takes any action subsequent to this report, or if this is just a higher order of posturing. EPA management has shown no hesitation to ignore the repeated warnings of its own scientists about the hazards of the neonicotinoids or they never would have reached the market in the first place. It will be interesting to see if BEAD takes a look at other commodity crops.

For the farmers who have been sold a bill of goods and have paid a premium for treated seed that gave them no benefits, this may result in legal action against the companies that misled them for years.

This documentary video, Neonicotinoids: The New DDT, is the best yet examining the implications of the systemic pesticides, the neonicotinoids.

We may be witness to the most massive poisoning of the earth in human history. The evidence is that the chemical companies knew full well what the downside to these pesticides would be, but chose to use their power, money and influence to hide those facts, and continue to do so. For its part the EPA repeatedly ignored the warnings of its own scientists and risk assesors and approved these chemicals with little regard to the dangers and they also continue to do so. We will all pay a heavy price for these failures, not just the beekeepers.

Here’s an earlier piece, also by Earth Focus.

Or is it the new passenger pigeon?

In an earlier posting I asked if neonicotinoids are the new DDT. Just minutes ago I received a press release announcing the filing of a petition calling for protection of the Monarch Butterfly under the Endangered Species Act. The petition is being brought by The Center For Food Safety, The Center For Biological Diversity, The Xerces Society, and Lincoln Brower, one of the world’s preeminent Monarch researchers who has studied these butterflies since 1954.

The petition comes in response to a 90 percent decline in Monarch populations since 1995. This same crash has been occuring with honey bees and the only thing that has prevented a similar decline is the presence of beekeepers and managed colonies. The bees are on life support and beekeepers are that life support. We are on the verge of losing the beekeepers however, because it is beginning to appear that most of the U.S. environment has been so massively poisoned that even their best efforts may be to no avail, their bees are going out into an environment that is hostile to life.

This may be one of the greatest environmental issues of our time. I encourage you to read the entire petition. It addresses pesticides from page 89 to page 98.

I also encourage you to scroll back and read some of the earlier posts. You might find the animated maps of neonicotinoid use particularly interesting. Remember when you watch the explosive growth of these chemicals that they are 5 to 10 thousand times more toxic than DDT to lower life forms. It is little wonder that we are seeing the catastrophy we are. The wonder is that it is still being defended and nothing is being done.

“The monarch is the canary in the cornfield, a harbinger of environmental change that we’ve brought about on such a broad scale that many species of pollinators are now at risk if we don’t take action to protect them,” – Lincoln Brower