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Thu Aug 28, 2008 at 11:00:00 AM PDT
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I just love it when other countries do what America won't do. In this case, a German group, Coalition Against Bayer Dangers, filed a suit against Bayer CropScience for killing the bees.
The group accuses Bayer CropScience of "marketing dangerous pesticides and thereby accepting the mass death of bees all over the world."
The coalition filed the charge in cooperation with German beekeepers who claim they lost thousands of hives after poisoning by the Bayer pesticide clothianidin in May.
Details below. |
| Jill Richardson :: Bayer Sued For Murder (of Bees) |
The pesticide in question came on the market in 2003 after patents had expired in many countries for a similar, very popular, insecticide went on sale (imidacloprid). Imidacloprid, used worldwide on corn, sunflowers, and canola since 1991, is Bayer's bestselling pesticide. Both insecticides are used on seeds but spreads throughout the plant, including pollen and nectar. I must say, it's not so shocking that an insecticide would be responsible for killing bugs. And that's the problem with insecticides - they don't distinguish between good bugs and bad bugs. They kill all bugs.
Up to 70 percent of all hives have been affected. In France, approximately 90 billion bees died over the past 10 years, reducing honey production by up to 60 percent.
In France, imidacloprid has been banned as a seed dressing for sunflowers since 1999 and in 2003 was also banned as a sweet corn treatment.
Convened by the French government, in 2003 the Comite Scientifique et Technique declared that the treatment of seeds with imidacloprid leads to significant risks for bees. Bayer's application for approval of clothianidin was also rejected by French authorities.
These pesticides are members of a Bayer cash cow, a group of pesticides called neonicotinoids. The coalition who is suing Bayer demands they stop selling neonicotinoids worldwide. Some countries, like France and later Germany, have implemented bans on products. The U.S. apparently isn't one of them.
In the United States, the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit August 15 in federal court in Washington, DC to force the federal government to disclose studies it ordered on the effect of clothianidin on honey bees.
Studies on clothianidin were ordered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from Bayer CropScience in 2003 when the EPA granted the company a registration for the chemical.
NRDC attorneys believe that the EPA has evidence of connections between pesticides and the mysterious honey bee die-offs reported across the country called colony collapse disorder that it has not made public.
Colony collapse disorder has claimed more than one-third of honey bees in the United States since it was first identified in 2006. |
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