EPA May Allow Extinction of Bees: Supports Bayer's Profits from Nerve Poison

How will the profiteers explain to their children that the flowers are disappearing because the bees are gone?

by Heidi Stevenson

19 December 2010

More than two years ago, I wrote an article entitled, Colony Collapse Disorder Is a Fraud - Pesticides Cause Bee Die-Offs, which was originally published on Natural News and later became the launch article on Gaia Health. I received a great deal of hate mail for it, with the singular exception of organic beekeepers and a few people willing to think for themselves. Now, though, the truth is coming out. Colony Collapse Disorder is a fraud.

There was, though, one point missing from the article. It noted all sorts of techniques that Bayer, the manufacturer of the pesticide clothianidin, the nerve poison killing bees, would use to sell their product as long as possible. However, it missed what is likely the most important of all: the power to corrupt the agency that should be standing between the bees' safety and them, the EPA.

Documentation of EPA's Collusion with Bayer

The EPA has decided, in the face of evidence that bees are at risk of extinction in the United States and that Bayer's clothianidin is the culprit, to allow continuation of its use. Jimmy Mengel, an editor of the superb Green Chip Stocks, wrote in EPA Complicit in Colony Collapse Disorder? about leaked Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) documents that "detailed the regulatory agency's allowance of clothianidin to maneuver its way through regulatory channels in the face of scientists' warning and flawed studies". The EPA was aware of the dangers of clothiniadin in 2003, but gave Bayer a conditional approval to start using it. The condition was that a field study be performed. Mengel outlines the following:

• In February 2003, the EPA asked for a life cycle study specifying the "toxicity profile" of clothianidin on honey bees and other pollinators.
• In April 2003, the EPA gave Bayer conditional approval to market clothianidin. The condition was that a warning label be included. Mengel's apt comment on this is, "Somehow I don't think the bees get a chance to read that label before slurping poisonous nectar from the corn fields."


• In March 2004, Bayer was given an extension and the rules of the study were loosened. Instead of doing it in the US on corn, they were allowed to do it in Canada on canola. Grist reported these problems with the rule changes:
  • Corn produces a lot more pollen than canola.
  • Honey bees are more attracted to corn pollen than to canola pollen.
  • In the US, canola is a minor crop and corn is the most common one.
    
  Mengel adds that the control fields in the study were a mere 250 yards from the pesticide-laden field. Thus, bees most likely took pollen from both fields, so the data was seriously muddied.
• The EPA didn't review the study until November 2007, when it declared that it was "scientifically sound". They didn't, though, release the study for public perusal. A Freedom of Information Act request by the Natural Resources Defense Council was ignored, and a lawsuit was required to make the EPA release it. During the same time, the EPA promoted the clothianidin approval from conditional to full, which allowed Bayer to request approval for use on cotton and mustard.
  
  During this time, the EPA's own Environmental Fate and Effects Division expressed concerns, saying:

  Clothianidin's major risk concern is to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees). Acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis.
  
  Information from standard tests and field studies, as well as incident reports involving other neonicotinoids insecticides suggest the potential for long term toxic risk to honey bees and other beneficial insects.

  They also discussed flaws in Bayer's study.
• Finally, last month, November 2010, the EPA changed its rating of Bayer's study from acceptable to supplemental, which means that another study must be done. Mengel's comment on this is:

  So now that the EPA recognizes the need for a new study, they'll be revoking the original approval and stopping clothianidin use, right?
  
  Fat chance. The EPA has said clothianidin will indeed keep its approval rating and continue to blanket corn crops all across the U.S. this spring.

What conclusion can be drawn, other than that the EPA is in Bayer's pocket?

Proof of the EPA's Complicity

Beekeeper Tom Theobold of Colorado wrote an article for Bee Culture about clothianidin in July of this year. He was subsequently contacted by an EPA employee, who told him that EPA scientists had found that the Bayer study was not sound. So, Theobold asked for a copy of the document stating that—and it was sent to him. The 101 page memo can be seen here in PDF format.

It was written by an ecologist and chemist, sent through a branch chief of the Environmental Fate and Effects Division of the EPA, and is a response to Bayer's request for approval of clothianidin's use on cotton and mustard. It doesn't mince words, stating:

The major risk concerns are with aquatic free-swimming and benthic invertebrates, terrestrial invertebrates, birds, and mammals.

The document states that known risks were not referenced in the Bayer assessment, refers to long term toxic risks to beneficial insects, and reports of a German incident in which clothianin's toxicity to honey bees was documented. All this is in the first two pages of the report!

Immediacy of the Risk to America's Bees

Tom Theobold is extremely concerned about honey bees' survival. His honey crop this year is the smallest he's ever seen over 35 years of bee keeping. He says:

This is the critical winter for the beekeeping industry. I don't think we can survive. If the beekeeping industry collapses, it jeopardizes a third of American agriculture.

Hiding the Truth in Plain Sight

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) does not exist. The term is nothing more than a means to hide the truth. There is no mystery—and there has never been a mystery—about what's been happening to bees.

All of these have been congregated under a convenient and fraudulent name: Colony Collapse Disorder. It's convenient because any or all of these problems can be concerns with bees. They're sensitive creatures. However, none of these things caused massive die-offs until toxic neonicotinoid pesticides, of which the most exemplary is clothianidin, entered into Agribusiness.

Neonicotinoids are a neural poison. They're poisonous not only to bees, but also to all living creatures, including us. They sicken bees, making them disoriented and weak, leaving them open to a host of secondary infections that they normally discharge without significant problems.

However, CCD sounded good. It made for good headlines. It provided lots of money for scientists—and they certainly jumped on the bandwagon. Most significant, though, is that CCD hides the truth in plain sight. By tossing neonicotinoids into a melding pot of potential causes, it created a nonexistent mystery. With funding assured to study it and try to get to the bottom of the "mystery", time was bought.

Bayer, along with other purveyors of neonicotinoid poisons, managed to hold off common awareness of the real cause of bee die-offs—their poisonous products.

At the same time, Bayer also seems to have pocketed at least one regulation agency, the EPA. The same technique, along with others, is used in other countries and by other similar pesticide manufacturers. Syngenta, which sells different types of neonicotinoids, has managed to set itself up as a research agency into CCD, even cofunding a one million pound contract to study CCD in the UK. An agency that should know better, the British Bee Keepers Association (BBKA), has plunged into the research pool by soliciting and getting large donations into what might be causing CCD. According to The Guardian, BBKA takes money from Bayer; in May 2008, they issued a statement regarding clothianidin and imidacloprid, both seed-applied neonicotinoids that are made by Bayer, stating:

[W]e are not aware of any problem in the UK related to any seed treatments and bees.

I can only shake my head at that statement. It's utterly horrifying—but it demonstrates how deeply endemic is the purchasing of apparently authoritative commentary.

What About the Flowers?

We're facing disaster to the environment, to agriculture, to the food supply, and to our own ability to survive because of the probable loss of bees. Pesticide makers like Bayer profit from the sale of a neurological poison that's the cause of the die-off of bees. So, they use their financial might to control the story around the cause of that oncoming disaster, giving the false impression that no one knows what's doing it. So, they give it a name, Colony Collapse Disorder, to redirect attention away from the real cause—their product. The scam is abetted by the tacit agreement of the scientists and agencies that take money to study CCD and promote it as a mystery. Finally, the agencies put into place with the public's tax money are controlled by the money of the pesticide corporations to assure that the exterminating product gets and stays on the market.

I just have to wonder how all these people profiting off the demise of our precious bees plan to explain to their children that the flowers are disappearing because the bees are gone.

*****************************************************************************

What do you think? Click here to comment!

*****************************************************************************

Search Gaia Health: