The Myth Of The “Bee-pocalypse”
August 31, 2017
From: Science 2.0
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Take the class of insecticides so much in the news, neonicotinoids, that some have blamed for problems with bee health. Didn’t the European Union ban them claiming they were posing unacceptable risks to bees? Isn’t that case closed?
Well, no. The “case” is very much alive before the European Court of Justice (1) which recently heard oral arguments against the ban and is now deciding whether weight of evidence justifies the EU’s precipitous action which, by the way, the EU’s 28 Member States failed to back on two occasions, leaving the European Commission to act unilaterally. And other regulatory bodies — such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Australian APVMA (2) — are not following the European example, because as more evidence comes in it’s clear that bee health problems – and the role played by neonics — aren’t as they were originally portrayed.
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