Leaked document shows EPA allowed bee-toxic pesticide despite own scientists’ red flags

[Richard D]

t's not just the State and Defense departments that are reeling this month from leaked documents. The Environmental Protection Agency now has some explaining to do, too. In place of dodgy dealings with foreign leaders, this case involves the German agrichemical giant Bayer; a pesticide with an unpronounceable name, clothianidin; and an insect species crucial to food production (as well as a food producer itself), the honeybee. And in lieu of a memo leaked to a globetrotting Australian, this one features a document delivered to a long-time Colorado beekeeper.

All of that, plus my favorite crop to fixate on: industrial corn, which blankets 88 million acres of farmland nationwide and produces a bounty of protein-rich pollen on which honeybees love to feast.

snip

An internal EPA memo released Wednesday confirms that the very agency charged with protecting the environment is ignoring the warnings of its own scientists about clothianidin, a pesticide from which Bayer racked up €183 million (about $262 million) in sales in 2009.

Clothianidin has been widely used on corn, the largest U.S. crop, since 2003. Suppliers sell seeds pre-treated with it. Like other members of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides, clothianidin gets "taken up by a plant's vascular system and expressed through pollen and nectar," according to Pesticide Action Network of North America (PANNA), which leaked the document along with Beyond Pesticides. That effect makes it highly toxic to a crop's pests -- and also harmful to pollen-hoarding honeybees, which have experienced mysterious annual massive die-offs (known as "colony collapse disorder") here in the United States at least since 2006.

http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-12-10-leaked-documents-show-epa-allowed-bee-toxic-pesticide-

[katandmoon]

1. Another day, another government betrayal.

[lovuian]

2. This will be ecological disaster of America

its in our water Killing bees and it takes YEARS and YEARS before its degraded down ....it might be hundreds of years
and soon no other country will take America's contaminated food or seeds

[Richard D]

6. Even worse

So many of our food crops depend on bees to pollinate the flowers.

Here's a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees

[catgirl]

3. Well it looks like we found the answer

I always thought the mite theory was suspect.

[Kaleko]

4. Incredibly important disclosure. May this news story spread like wildfire. n/t

[KT2000]

5. Cost shifting

Instead of stopping and preventing the damage from this product, others are left to pick u the tab for their negligence. Bayer is assured their profits but others suffer the serious consequences. Bayer is a huge and powerful company.