Attack of the Killer Regulators
June 6, 2014
From: The Wall Street Journal
Misguided rules on pesticide use could be a threat to the very honeybees the EU is trying to save.
By Jon Entine
Science can’t be rushed. Usually legislators make policy decisions on controversial issues only after carefully weighing current research. But just the opposite has unfolded in the EU. European Commissioners last year passed a two-year ban on a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids in a preemptive move to protect honeybees, after sketchy reports of higher-than-normal winter deaths among the arthropods. Now the unintended consequences of what seems like a hasty decision are emerging.
Phased in during the 1990s, so-called neonics are usually applied to seeds, which then produce plants that systemically fight pests, thus reducing the need for spraying pesticides. When bee die-offs mysteriously escalated in 2006, advocacy groups pointed to genetically modified crops as the culprit. But with no evidence to support that speculation, attention shifted to pesticides, neonics in particular.
The commission’s moratorium vote, which took effect throughout the EU in December 2013, came despite contradictory field evidence—and well before the release of a spate of new studies suggesting that bee health is now improving globally. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in May that bee deaths dropped more than 25% this past winter, and that the overall population has increased 13% since 2008.
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