10 ms·

Ban pesticides linked to bee deaths, say MPs

105 points by drucken 14y ago

liliakai 14y ago
Go UK, go! Here's a petition to ban them in the US, to be presented to the EPA this Earth Day (4/22): http://www.causes.com/causes/430648-bee-the-change/actions/1686797?recruiter_id=181038230 http://www.causes.com/causes/430648-bee-the-change/actions/1...
- justincormack 14y ago
  The UK is voting against the European proposal to ban these, so despite this petition they will probably not be banned.
vanderZwan 14y ago
That's a very ambiguous headline...
OGinparadise 14y ago
"Linked" is too weak of a word, but sadly, by the time the link it's proven it may be too late. Before the government bans the product you make or use, causing you a lot of monetary loss, reason says that they should think twice. So, IMO nothing will be done, just yet. They are too many special interests and evidence apparently is not conclusive. Last year I remember reading that cell towers might be the culprit, interfering with their navigation or something like that.
- spodek 14y ago
  If only people had this perspective before taking the risk at first, we wouldn't act like pollution was the norm and unpolluted nature was the aberration. I like your logic, but I would have applied it before introducing something that kills a species we don't want to kill. "Before the government allows the use of the product never before seen in nature, causing you a lot of monetary loss, reason says that they should think twice. So, IMO nothing will be done, just yet. They are too many special interests and evidence apparently is not conclusive." The cell tower stuff was a red herring.
  - OGinparadise 14y ago
    Before the government allows the use of the product never before seen in nature, causing you a lot of monetary loss, reason says that they should think twice. They think and experiment more than twice and pesticides are heavily regulated. The problem is that by the time symptoms show, it can be too late. On the other hand, virtually everything is a tradeoff: the houses we live in, newspapers we read, the meat we eat, the beer we drink etc etc is harmful to some habitat. So if you want certain things, you have to tolerate some other things. Pesticides, fertilizers and GM crops enable us to get much more from the same acre so they are very tempting to use. Not saying that I'm cool with having all bees die off though.
    - unclebucknasty 14y ago
      The problem with your logic is that it assumes everyone is forthright and honest, even with tremendous amounts of money involved. We know what history and human nature teach us about that assumption. These pesticides were initially sold as unharmful or minimally toxic to bees. Now that we are using it, we have experts telling us that it will absolutely kill bees. That's a pretty dramatic distinction. Do you honestly believe that in all of their "thinking and experimenting more than twice", no one ever observed that this stuff killed bees and, on the contrary, everyone actually believed it to be unharmful to them?
      - waterlesscloud 14y ago
        If you don't trust the experimental results, exactly what process are you proposing? More experiments? Will you trust those?
        unclebucknasty 14y ago
        Your comments beg the question. The "experimental results" you reference are meaningless if they are not properly disclosed and utilized. In fact, seems to me that an investigation is in order as to how these supposedly stringent regulatory processes gave us pesticides that were purportedly safe for bees and other beneficial insects, while we now know that they are clearly lethal to bees. They specifically stated that their chemicals do not do something that they clearly do, and that something is ecologically and agriculturally devastating. I find it very difficult to believe that this was completely unknown prior to approval. If you are telling me that you believe it was unknown after utilizing the best processes we have to test and model, then I would say that we clearly need to ban these pesticides and approve nothing else until we are better at determining outcomes. Beyond that, what I would trust is a regulatory process that does not involve revolving doors between government bureaucrats on the regulatory side and industry. That and a true democracy wherein politicians are not bought by the highest bidder. Those are just starting points. So, no, I would not trust more experiments performed by the same people, processes, and "oversight" that brought us the last round. You would?
- saosebastiao 14y ago
  Expected value matters. If the cost of being right vs wrong is heavily skewed, a slight (or in your words, 'weak') change in evidence supporting a conclusion may have a huge impact on the expected value of the outcome. Think of it like a gun that has a 99% chance of being a harmless toy. If it only has a 1% chance of being a real gun, does that mean that it is okay to play with it like a toy?
tokenadult 14y ago
I was just reading On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee, and that reminded me how recent the presence of Old World honeybees ( Apis mellifera ) is in the New World. http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Apis_mellifera/ http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Apis_mellifer... Those bees were brought here to the United States by European settlers, and their progress across North America is part of the rather recent historical record. It seems prudent to me to check the trade-offs between using different pesticides and continuing to use those apparently implicated in reduction of bee numbers recently in the United States. A report I heard on National Public Radio included comments by companies that distribute the more recent pesticides that those can be reformulated to reduce risk to bees, which seems like a sensible thing to do. What was happening to plants and especially food crops before those pesticides (and, for that matter, before Apis mellifera bees existed in North America) would be well worth considering carefully before deciding what pattern of regulation to follow. Environmental trade-offs happen all the time: they have been happening since long before Homo sapiens came on the scene. Perhaps developing new methods of applying the pesticides most in doubt may be enough to preserve healthy populations of honeybees in the United States.
- nmb 14y ago
  On Food and Cooking is a fantastic book.
josscrowcroft 14y ago
"Neonicotinoids will kill bees, let me be absolutely clear about that." – DEFRA's chief scientist, who refuses to support a ban on bee–decimating pesticides. Nice touch.
- unclebucknasty 14y ago
  Yeah, what's also funny is how the goalposts keep moving. This stuff was initially sold as not harmful to beneficial insects like bees. Now, it's "OK, we know for a fact that this stuff will kill bees. The question is, how many?"
crusso 14y ago
I haven't heard that pesticides were a serious contender for bee death. Everything I've read so far recently has pointed to the rise of new parasites. Even TFA has a section entitled "Why are bees in decline?" in which disease and parasites are the primary culprits. Seems like a misleading headline and a possibly misguided campaign.
- amalag 14y ago
  So spraying fields with "almost nicotine" that is designed to target insect nervous systems wouldn't have anything to do with it.
  - unclebucknasty 14y ago
    Right. The article clearly states that we are spraying crops that bees pollinate with pesticides that are known to kill them, but people are still acting like it's a mystery.
    - amalag 14y ago
      It may not kill them outright, some scientists think it affects their nervous systems and especially their navigation. They go out to forage for nectar but do not return.
- cygx 14y ago
  To quote myself[0]: > We do know that Clothianidin caused the bee deaths in Baden-Württemberg (Germany) in 2008[1], which led to a ban for corn seeds[2]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5465306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5465306 (me, last week) [1] http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news264587 http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news264587 (press release by Julius Kühn institute, German) [2] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/maispflschmv/BJNR502300009.html http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/maispflschmv/BJNR502300009... (neonicotinoid ban for corn seeds, German)
uptown 14y ago
Previous discussion about bees here with some good insights: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5460508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5460508
unclebucknasty 14y ago
The article clearly states that the stuff kills bees. No one argues that. So, rather than debate for two years exactly how many bees are killed by these pesticides, why not all agree that there is a serious die off issue that doesn't need to be exacerbated and ban the stuff. If bees completely rebound, then great. If not, then there's one less thing making the problem worse. This is purely an economic issue for the companies involved. The first pesticide of this type was registered with the EPA in 1994, with others registered as recently as 2003, and several others still undergoing review. So, these are all relatively recent to market and our food production is not dependent upon their use. Those arguments are simply a red herring. The chemical companies are interested in recouping their research investment and protecting this relatively new market. Nothing wrong with that goal on its face, but the question is, at what cost?

105 points by drucken 14y ago

Go UK, go! Here's a petition to ban them in the US, to be presented to the EPA this Earth Day (4/22): http://www.causes.com/causes/430648-bee-the-change/actions/1686797?recruiter_id=181038230 http://www.causes.com/causes/430648-bee-the-change/actions/1...

justincormack 14y ago
The UK is voting against the European proposal to ban these, so despite this petition they will probably not be banned.

vanderZwan 14y ago

That's a very ambiguous headline...

OGinparadise 14y ago

"Linked" is too weak of a word, but sadly, by the time the link it's proven it may be too late. Before the government bans the product you make or use, causing you a lot of monetary loss, reason says that they should think twice. So, IMO nothing will be done, just yet. They are too many special interests and evidence apparently is not conclusive. Last year I remember reading that cell towers might be the culprit, interfering with their navigation or something like that.

spodek 14y ago
If only people had this perspective before taking the risk at first, we wouldn't act like pollution was the norm and unpolluted nature was the aberration. I like your logic, but I would have applied it before introducing something that kills a species we don't want to kill. "Before the government allows the use of the product never before seen in nature, causing you a lot of monetary loss, reason says that they should think twice. So, IMO nothing will be done, just yet. They are too many special interests and evidence apparently is not conclusive." The cell tower stuff was a red herring.
- OGinparadise 14y ago
  Before the government allows the use of the product never before seen in nature, causing you a lot of monetary loss, reason says that they should think twice. They think and experiment more than twice and pesticides are heavily regulated. The problem is that by the time symptoms show, it can be too late. On the other hand, virtually everything is a tradeoff: the houses we live in, newspapers we read, the meat we eat, the beer we drink etc etc is harmful to some habitat. So if you want certain things, you have to tolerate some other things. Pesticides, fertilizers and GM crops enable us to get much more from the same acre so they are very tempting to use. Not saying that I'm cool with having all bees die off though.
  - unclebucknasty 14y ago
    The problem with your logic is that it assumes everyone is forthright and honest, even with tremendous amounts of money involved. We know what history and human nature teach us about that assumption. These pesticides were initially sold as unharmful or minimally toxic to bees. Now that we are using it, we have experts telling us that it will absolutely kill bees. That's a pretty dramatic distinction. Do you honestly believe that in all of their "thinking and experimenting more than twice", no one ever observed that this stuff killed bees and, on the contrary, everyone actually believed it to be unharmful to them?
    - waterlesscloud 14y ago
      If you don't trust the experimental results, exactly what process are you proposing? More experiments? Will you trust those?
      - unclebucknasty 14y ago
        Your comments beg the question. The "experimental results" you reference are meaningless if they are not properly disclosed and utilized. In fact, seems to me that an investigation is in order as to how these supposedly stringent regulatory processes gave us pesticides that were purportedly safe for bees and other beneficial insects, while we now know that they are clearly lethal to bees. They specifically stated that their chemicals do not do something that they clearly do, and that something is ecologically and agriculturally devastating. I find it very difficult to believe that this was completely unknown prior to approval. If you are telling me that you believe it was unknown after utilizing the best processes we have to test and model, then I would say that we clearly need to ban these pesticides and approve nothing else until we are better at determining outcomes. Beyond that, what I would trust is a regulatory process that does not involve revolving doors between government bureaucrats on the regulatory side and industry. That and a true democracy wherein politicians are not bought by the highest bidder. Those are just starting points. So, no, I would not trust more experiments performed by the same people, processes, and "oversight" that brought us the last round. You would?
saosebastiao 14y ago
Expected value matters. If the cost of being right vs wrong is heavily skewed, a slight (or in your words, 'weak') change in evidence supporting a conclusion may have a huge impact on the expected value of the outcome. Think of it like a gun that has a 99% chance of being a harmless toy. If it only has a 1% chance of being a real gun, does that mean that it is okay to play with it like a toy?

tokenadult 14y ago

I was just reading On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee, and that reminded me how recent the presence of Old World honeybees ( Apis mellifera ) is in the New World. http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Apis_mellifera/ http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Apis_mellifer... Those bees were brought here to the United States by European settlers, and their progress across North America is part of the rather recent historical record. It seems prudent to me to check the trade-offs between using different pesticides and continuing to use those apparently implicated in reduction of bee numbers recently in the United States. A report I heard on National Public Radio included comments by companies that distribute the more recent pesticides that those can be reformulated to reduce risk to bees, which seems like a sensible thing to do. What was happening to plants and especially food crops before those pesticides (and, for that matter, before Apis mellifera bees existed in North America) would be well worth considering carefully before deciding what pattern of regulation to follow. Environmental trade-offs happen all the time: they have been happening since long before Homo sapiens came on the scene. Perhaps developing new methods of applying the pesticides most in doubt may be enough to preserve healthy populations of honeybees in the United States.

nmb 14y ago
On Food and Cooking is a fantastic book.

josscrowcroft 14y ago

"Neonicotinoids will kill bees, let me be absolutely clear about that." – DEFRA's chief scientist, who refuses to support a ban on bee–decimating pesticides. Nice touch.

unclebucknasty 14y ago
Yeah, what's also funny is how the goalposts keep moving. This stuff was initially sold as not harmful to beneficial insects like bees. Now, it's "OK, we know for a fact that this stuff will kill bees. The question is, how many?"

crusso 14y ago

I haven't heard that pesticides were a serious contender for bee death. Everything I've read so far recently has pointed to the rise of new parasites. Even TFA has a section entitled "Why are bees in decline?" in which disease and parasites are the primary culprits. Seems like a misleading headline and a possibly misguided campaign.

amalag 14y ago
So spraying fields with "almost nicotine" that is designed to target insect nervous systems wouldn't have anything to do with it.
- unclebucknasty 14y ago
  Right. The article clearly states that we are spraying crops that bees pollinate with pesticides that are known to kill them, but people are still acting like it's a mystery.
  - amalag 14y ago
    It may not kill them outright, some scientists think it affects their nervous systems and especially their navigation. They go out to forage for nectar but do not return.
cygx 14y ago
To quote myself[0]: > We do know that Clothianidin caused the bee deaths in Baden-Württemberg (Germany) in 2008[1], which led to a ban for corn seeds[2]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5465306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5465306 (me, last week) [1] http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news264587 http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news264587 (press release by Julius Kühn institute, German) [2] http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/maispflschmv/BJNR502300009.html http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/maispflschmv/BJNR502300009... (neonicotinoid ban for corn seeds, German)

uptown 14y ago

Previous discussion about bees here with some good insights: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5460508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5460508

unclebucknasty 14y ago

The article clearly states that the stuff kills bees. No one argues that. So, rather than debate for two years exactly how many bees are killed by these pesticides, why not all agree that there is a serious die off issue that doesn't need to be exacerbated and ban the stuff. If bees completely rebound, then great. If not, then there's one less thing making the problem worse. This is purely an economic issue for the companies involved. The first pesticide of this type was registered with the EPA in 1994, with others registered as recently as 2003, and several others still undergoing review. So, these are all relatively recent to market and our food production is not dependent upon their use. Those arguments are simply a red herring. The chemical companies are interested in recouping their research investment and protecting this relatively new market. Nothing wrong with that goal on its face, but the question is, at what cost?