Transcript, oral evidence presented to the Environmental Audit Committee in the UK

HOUSE OF COMMONS
ORAL EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE THE
ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT COMMITTEE
INSECTS AND INSECTICIDES
WEDNESDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2012

The full, uncorrected transcript can be accessed here.

Excerpt:

EXAMINATION OF WITNESSES

Witnesses: Dr Mike Bushell, Principal Scientific Adviser, Syngenta, Dr Fraser Lewis, Division Head, Environmental Safety, Syngenta, and Dr Julian Little, Government Affairs, Bayer CropScience, gave evidence.

Q154 Chair: I would like to welcome each of you to our session this afternoon, an inquiry that is important to this Select Committee and one that I think is of great interest to many people. For your information, we are expecting votes at 4 pm and we have three separate sessions, so we have a number of detailed questions that we wish to ask of you, if we may.

I would like to start off with a question particularly for Dr Lewis and Dr Bushell. I am referring to today’s Farmers Weekly and the quote, “Based on previous statements, we believe this committee”-the Environmental Audit Committee-“is in danger of pinpointing the bee colony decline on a single pesticide when there are other important factors at play.” On what evidence did you feel compelled to make that statement?

Dr Bushell: That statement was made by one of our Basel corporate affairs people.

Q155 Chair: Do you have the evidence for it?

Dr Bushell: That we made the statement or that you are focusing only on insecticides?

Chair: I wondered what evidence you have to cause Syngenta to make that statement.

Dr Bushell: The issue about bee health is multifactorial, as I am sure you know, and focusing only on a single one is unlikely to get a good result for bee health.

Chair: Thank you very much indeed. We must move on to detailed questions.

…

A compilation of evidence from the UK

This is evidence submitted to the British House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee on the systemic pesticides. It is encyclopedic and will take some time to wade through, but the Brits are several steps ahead of us in ferreting out the evidence and addressing the failures in risk assessment. It takes time to read and absorb what is being presented here, but there is some very important information and it is worth the time if you hope to come to any understanding of what is going on.

Start wih Rosemary Mason’s Insects and Insecticides but don’t stop there. She covers just about all of the controversy. Of special interest is her critique of the Cresswell Paper and the misuse of Hill’s Criteria in an attempt to dismiss the role of systemics in bee losses. This is particularly pertinent to us since Dennis vanEnglesdorp was one of the authors of this paper.

This isn’t easy, but some of us must try to understand or we are done for. These mega corporations have legions of paid employees working against us. While the focus is the UK, Rosemary has much to say about the conduct of the United States EPA.

Killer in a Bottle?

Household pesticides may play a role in declining bee populations says an article published by the University of Minnesota.

Evidence of pesticide harm to bees is now swarming

“Research shows current regulation is woefully inadequate in protecting the creatures that pollinate much of our food,” according to the Guardian. Excerpt below. Many of the comments are good too.

The new paper, published in Nature, shows that bumblebees foraging naturally and exposed to realistic doses of pesticides suffer in two key ways. First they are about twice as likely to die: two-thirds of the bees are lost when exposed to two pesticides compared to only a third when not exposed. Second, the exposed bees are half as successful in gathering food.

Neonicotinoids in Australia

June Stoyer and I interviewed Australian commercial beekeeper Jeffrey Gibbs and that interview aired today. This is an important interview, the supporters of systemic pesticides have cited Australia as an example of a continent with no problems, but Mr. Gibbs presents a quite different view. One key difference is that varroa mites, used repeatedly as an excuse for the U.S. bee losses, are not present in Australia.

If you have not already done so, you should also listen to the interview with Graham White of Scotland done last week, speaking on the problems in Europe and the UK.

Are industry and government responsible for killing bees?

See what the producers of the hot new bee documentary, Killing Bees, are saying in their press release

An excerpt:

The US food supply and one in twelve American agriculture jobs are directly threatened by the EPA’s decision to approve the use of a controversial pesticide that has led to the catastrophic destruction of millions of honeybees essential to the food production ecosystem, reveals a new investigative TV special Killing Bees: Are Industry and Government Responsible?, produced by Link TV’s environmental news magazine Earth Focus.

The report documents how the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gave conditional approval in 2003 of the use of the pesticide Clothianidin in the US, despite concerns by EPA scientists that it may be highly toxic to pollinators and without adequate testing to ensure its safety for bees. This decision contributed to a devastating ripple effect that begins with the destruction of honeybees, which are essential pollinators for most American crops.

While the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports annual honeybee colony losses of about 30 percent annually, US beekeepers say the losses are much higher — 50 to 80 percent. According to Colorado beekeeper Tom Theobald, “We are at the tipping point, one or two years away from disaster.”

Bee reviews will not be rushed

In response to a letter from several senators, Jim Jones, acting assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said that although the agency is concerned about potential pesticides’ impacts on bees, it does not intend to further accelerate its review of neonicotinoid pesticides which some beekeepers and environmental groups are blaming for bee kills …

Jones stated that these reviews will take time. “As part of advancing our understanding in the context of reevaluation, the EPA has already required six specific studies to address uncertainties related to potential honey bee exposure, and effects from imidacloprid alone,” Jones wrote. “Additional, similar studies will be required of other neonicotinoid insecticides in the near future. These studies, while underway or anticipated, will require time to complete …” – Southwest Farm Press

The EPA will not be rushed?  I hope these Senators have the backbone to respond to this insolence from public servants with some swift management action. This agency should have answered most of these questions 20 years ago, and the fact that they didn’t should lead to their removal from their jobs. Will not be rushed? They should be rushed out of public service and replaced with people who will carry out protection of the environment and the American people as they should.

Sound familiar?

Some of the best information out there

Human health and global biodiversity lies in the hands of the pesticides industry (PDF).

Introduction and Summary
This document provides evidence that, unwittingly or otherwise, a long-term strategy has existed with the aim of putting the pesticides industry in charge of human health and biodiversity. In 2008, under the Editorship of Eric Chivian MD and Aaron Bernstein MD (from the Center for Human Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School) the book Sustaining Life. How human health depends on biodiversity was published by Oxford University Press. It won the award for best biology book of 2008. Sadly, it was already too late. Over the last 20 years or so, a series of new agrochemical compounds have been authorised by Regulatory Authorities around the world. Two in particular, the systemic neonicotinoid insecticides and genetically-engineered crops have caused gross contamination of the environment. These agrochemicals are the silent destroyers of human health and global biodiversity. GM crops are now being authorised at such a rate around the world that they cannot possibly have been adequately tested for their long-term effects. Independent scientists who have warned of the hazards of these chemicals have been completely ignored by governments. Those who reported inconvenient truths have lost their jobs, or had their departments closed down, or been publically vilified by the scientific community.