The Pesticide That's Wrecking Your Summer Picnic

Life isn't so sweet now for honeybees. According to the Pesticide Action Network of North America, a record 35 percent of honeybee populations have died off since 2006, victim of what's now termed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

The environmental "disorder" created by the bees massive die-off is part of a larger planetary extinction that threatens humanity. With the last great extinction being dinosaurs, now "we're living through the sixth great extinction event," the group notes.

This dramatic loss of biodiversity is one of the most severe threats to the planet because we've moved way past any sustainable levels. And bees are the canary in the coal-mine.

What does this mean for us? Well, bees pollinate one-third of all of our food. Imagine your summer picnic. It may be pleasantly devoid of swarming bees, but you may not have any watermelon to eat in the first place. No, fresh lemonade either. You'll have to skip the fresh fig jam, too. And, dessert won't be as sweet without the raspberry-blackberry pie.  All of these crops, along with hundreds of others, are dependent on bees pollinating them to grow.

Th0ugh the exact causes of CCD aren't fully understood yet, mounting evidence continues to point to pesticides, especially a certain class known as neonicontinoids. One of the most common of these is Clothiandin, produced by the German giant, Bayer Crop Science.

Clothiandin is toxic to insect pollinators such as honeybees because it disrupts their nervous systems.  However, the rewards for this insecticide have been sweet for Bayer, accounting for over a billion dollars in sales since 2009. Approximately 88 million acres of U.S. farmland is planted with corn, stretching from coast to coast. Nearly all of it is treated with Clothiandin. And, though honeybees don't pollinate corn, this crop accounts for a large portion of honeybee nutrition due to its sheer prevalence (see pdf backgrounder).

Yet despite the plethora of Clothiandin-treated corn seeds found throughout the U.S., our European allies chose a different approach.  The product has been banned in France, Germany and Italy.  Since Clothiandin was banned in Italy two years ago, there's been no widespread cases of bees deaths near cornfields.

So, how did Clothiandin get through the regulatory channels here for such widespread use? Well, it turns out that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency granted the pesticide a "conditional" registration, with Bayer later required to submit data about the human health and environmental safety of its product.   Bayer eventually submitted a shoddy report that was rebuffed by CCD experts. And, the EPA.

In leaked documents, U.S. EPA expressed concerns about the risk of Clothiandin to honeybees: "acute toxicity studies to honey bees show that clothianidin is highly toxic on both a contact and an oral basis" (see page 2, pdf).

Yet despite these serious concerns of agency scientists, EPA continues to approve the use of this pesticide. Wrote Tom Philpott of Grist, "in the EPA's dealings with Bayer on this particular insecticide, the agency charged with protecting the environment has consistently made industry-friendly decisions that contradict the conclusions of its own scientists -- and threaten to do monumental harm to our food system by wiping out its key pollinators."

Clothiandin has become the WikiLeaks of the food world (Many outlets even erroneously reported this was an actual WikiLeaks document; in reality, news of EPA's internal disapproval was exposed by PANNA, beekeeper Tom Theobald, and Beyond Pesticides).

Regardless, the documents have exposed the EPA, the regulatory agency tasked with protecting human health and the environment, of failing to act on known risks.

You can help to protect honeybees, our food supply and the biodiversity of our planet. Sign this petition to the head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, to ban Clothiandin.

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Photo: cygnus 921, flickr creative commons