The role of pesticides in the death of honeybees is once more in the spotlight. The Co-op group, which you may remember launched Plan Bee earlier this year, was this week calling on government to fund research into the impact of the neonicotinoid group of pesticides . The company has prohibited the pesticides on its farms until it is proven they do not harm honeybees.
None of the £10m set aside for pollinator research in the UK this year is going towards pesticide research. Why is this? Could it be because the funders, such as the Wellcome Trust and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the universities which could untake the research are all reliant on the pesticide manufacturers for future funding? Is the British government in the pocket of these giant chemical companies?
The Co-op is so convinced that university departments are influenced by these companies, it refuses to name the reseachers it has awarded a £100,000 grant in order for them to further investigate Italian findings that drops of water from sweetcorn (maize) plants irrigated wth the pesticides can kill the bees.
Despite Conservation charity, Buglife, collecting all the research there is on the harm neonicotinoid, imidacloprid does to the health and life cycle of bees and submitting it to Michael Jacobs, the prime minister’s special advisor on environment issues, last month, the government won’t budge on its position.
It says all the relevant research was done when the chemical was approved and it has seen nothing new to suggest that its poses “an unacceptable risk to the health of bees”. Has anyone read the Buglife report?
Perhaps Hilary Benn should have a chat with his Italian counterpart. Agriculture minister, Luca Zaia, has decided to keep the suspension of neonics for maize seed dressing in force until 2010 because he says there seems to be a correlation between their use and the depopulation of bee hives.
Sarah Brown, the PM’s wife, has wadded into the debate, bringing together beekeepers, campaigners, the Co-op and reseachers together for a secret meeting at Number 10 last month. Were the pesticide companies there?
One of the problems with getting these pesticides suspended in the UK, could be the stance taken by the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) which continues to endorse some of the chemical companies’ products as bee-friendly (not neonics, I must point out) and to receive money in return for educational purposes. It says it is better to have dialogue with these companies. Many of its members disagree.
The issue was raised at the official UK premiere of The Vanishing of the Bees film on Thursday night. The film showed French and German beekeepers taking direct action against pesticide manufactures and regional government for its stance on pesticides. This was in stark contrast to our polite placard-waving apiarists calling for research money.
The film is a polemic that points blame at the neonics. US commercial beekeeper, Dave Hackenberg, who is credited with discovering Colony Collapse Disorder and features heavily in the film and our book, was flown in to answer questions. The man who has doggedly pursued the pesticide line when most scientists were obsessed with finding a new viruses firmly backed the film’s conclusion.
But let’s not forgotten that Dave’s type of beekeeping : thrucking bees thousands of miles a year, feeding them corn syrup solution and egg protein (because you’ve taken away all their honey, located the hives where there’s no natural food, and want them to work harder), and replacing the queen every six months just isn’t sustainable. It may be necessary to produce cheap food. But the bees are telling us at what cost.
The solution - replace intensive farming with a more sustainable way of producing which I’m afraid we’ll have to pay more for it.