Bayer is a $50bn German multinational pharmace
Their latest PR disaster (and Environmental one for us) is legal action in Europe to overturn an EU Court ban on the neonic pesticides they produce, which repeated scientific research has shown significantly harms the Bee population (see side story)).
In May this year, the European Court of Justice ruled in favor of a partial ban on three neonics — and environmentalists hoped the case was finally settled for the bees. But now, Bayer announced it wants to drag the EU back into court again and appeal. If it wins, it would wreck the recent almost complete ban too.
Why should what’s happening in Europe be of concern to you?
Here’s why: According to Tom Philpott of the Genetic Literacy Project:
“Here in the United States, use of neonicotinoids continues unabated. They’re widely applied to corn, soybean, and cotton seeds before planting. The chemicals suffuse the resulting plants, including their pollen and nectar, poisoning crop-chomping insects.
Meanwhile, research uncovering the potential unintended effects from neonics continues to pile up. The pesticides are showing up at high levels in the Great Lakes and are likely harming songbirds, as well as bees. Perhaps most troublesome of all for the companies that make them, recent studies have found that neonics don’t seem to boost yields for either corn or soybean
Bees are vital to our food supply — providing one of every three bites of food we eat. But bees and other pollinators are declining at catastrophic rates and neonic pesticides are a key culprit. That’s why maintaining the EU’s ban on neonics is so important.”
America’s beekeepers watched as a third of the country’s honeybee colonies were lost over the last year, part of a decade-long die-off experts said may threaten our food supply.
The annual survey of roughly 5,000 beekeepers showed the 33% dip from April 2016 to April 2017. The decrease is small compared to the survey’s previous 10 years, when the decrease hovered at roughly 40%. From 2012 to 2013, nearly half of the nation’s colonies died.
(The US EPA has shown no real intention of making a move to ban these pesticides though some States, Maryland and Connecticut have done so by themselves). Bayer and Monsanto between them spent over $5m on Lobbyists, so they seem to be getting, so far, a good return on their investment.
Leading the public campaign to uphold the ban is pressure group sumofus.org. On their website they claim:
“Neonics are coated upon seeds before they are planted, spreading through the plant and killing insects stopping by for a snack. These pesticides can be replaced by more integrated pest management approaches which don’t have such a devastating effect on the food chain. But companies like Bayer, BASF and Syngenta make a fortune from selling neonics — so they’ll do everything they can to protect their profits”.
SumOfUs have been right at the front of the global campaign to save our bees. Tens of thousands from the SumOfUs community took action and got Lowe’s — one of the biggest garden retailers in the world — to stop selling bee-killing pesticides. And helped France win a major victory for the bees: France’s parliament voted in favor of banning all neonics — now we are fighting to get the law through the Senate and uphold this historic ban”.
Sign the petition to tell Bayer, BASF and Syngenta to drop their bee-killing lawsuits:
Go to: https://actions.sumofus.org
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