EU to revisit ban on insecticides over bee die-off

Date:05-28-2015

European authorities have waded back into the hotly contested debate over whether the world's most widely used insecticides are harming bees.

The European Union two years ago approved sweeping restrictions on the insecticides, known as neonicotinoids, because of fears about their impact on the insects. The EU has now decided to review the bans, asking researchers from around the globe to contribute the latest science.

The chemicals have become ground zero in the fight between the chemical industry and environmental groups over pesticides.

Over the past decade, anecdotal evidence mounted in Europe and North America that beekeepers were seeing large, unexplained declines in the populations of their hives, sparking concern that insects crucial for pollinating crops and the overall ecosystem were dying off. Environmentalists and some scientists pointed the finger at neonicotinoids--a relatively new class of pesticides that target the nervous system of insects.

But the chemical industry questions whether bee populations are actually declining. And even if the decline is real, the companies argue that other factors such as parasites, viruses, weather and loss of natural habitat are to blame.
Two of the main manufacturers of the chemicals, industry giants Bayer AG and Syngenta AG, are ramping up a lobbying and public-relations campaign to scrap the European bans. They have funded a number of studies on the impact of their products on bees, all of which showed no harm done.

Environmental groups are preparing to fight back to ensure the restrictions stay in place.

"We think the evidence is overwhelming that neonicotinoids harm bees," said Sandra Bell, at the environmental group Friends of the Earth.

In the U.S., the authorities have yet to take action against neonicotinoids. The White House announced a plan in May to reduce annual winter losses for U.S. honeybee colonies to 15%, from loss rates in recent years of 20-25%.
The EU bans covered imidacloprid, the world's top-selling insecticide, made primarily by Bayer; clothianidin, also made by Bayer; and thiamethoxam, made by Syngenta. The three chemicals account for billions of dollars in annual sales globally for the two chemical giants.

The industry has already sued the commission over the bans. "The suspension of some uses for the three substances was taken based on significant public pressure, on scientific guidelines which were under discussion and not validated," says Jean-Charles Bocquet, director general of the European Crop Protection Association, which represents Bayer and Syngenta.

The chemicals were introduced in the 1990s and became widely used because they were less toxic to mammals. But the insecticides also spread throughout the leaves, petals, nectar and pollen of a number of plants, making them a potential threat for pollinating insects such as bees.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, banned most uses of the insecticides on corn, cotton, rapeseed, corn and sunflowers, including seeds treated with the chemicals.

Bayer and Syngenta have argued that studies supporting the bans don't replicate how bees are actually exposed to the chemicals as they are used by farmers in the field. The studies usually exposed bees to the chemicals in laboratories, arguably in higher doses than a bee would encounter in nature.

"The dose we have used might overestimate the dose on the field," said Mickaël Henry, a researcher at France's government-funded agricultural research institute and co-author of one of the studies cited by the EU in its ban. His study found that honeybees exposed to thiamethoxam were less able to navigate back to their colonies, to the point that the colonies were at risk of collapse.

"We have no real cues of what the proper realistic dose you should use in such an experiment," he says.