August 20,2008
Credibility Collapse Disorder: Why We Should Be Skeptical of Pesticide Conspiracy Theories
By Kim Flottum, editor of Bee Culture magazine.
(Jim Fischer is pinch-hitting for Kim Flottum, who is benched with a sprained typing hand.)
The National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) announced on August 18th that they were suing the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Again.
For what must be the eleventy-seventh time?
But we beekeepers are going to settle the lawsuit right here in your web browser before anyone does anything more embarrassing than they already have. 'Cause this one is a real doozy.
This NRDC lawsuit is different from their many prior suits against the EPA. The NRDC claims that the EPA has been hiding the truth from everyone. The NRDC says that their lawsuit will expose an EPA cover-up of a connection between pesticides and the losses of colonies of honey bees that we beekeepers call "Colony Collapse Disorder".
Their press release says "NRDC legal experts and a leading bee researcher are convinced that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has evidence of connections between pesticides and the mysterious honey bee die-offs... colony collapse disorder..."
Now that's some pretty spooky stuff. It sounds like the plot of a rerun of the old TV show "The X-Files". If our own government is hiding proof that pesticides are behind the honey bee colony losses that made headlines worldwide and scared the heck out of everyone, this could only happen if senior staff at EPA had been bribed by Bayer CropScience, who makes the specific pesticide about which the NRDC is concerned.
But it wouldn't stop there - the NRDC's claims would require a wider conspiracy. Such a cover-up would have to ALSO have to mean that Bayer was controlled by an evil villain straight out of a James Bond movie, a mad scientist bent on destroying civilization itself by crippling our ability to grow food.
Such paranoid nightmares are clearly delusional thinking. No matter what scenario one paints, EPA staff and the employees of Bayer would suffer the same fate as all the rest of us. They need to eat too.
So, just what is the NRDC thinking here?
Are they thinking at all?
Follow the Money
To make the bizarre nature of the NRDC lawsuit clear, there simply isn't any evidence that links pesticides to CCD. Even researchers who presumed that pesticides might have had something to do with the problems have been forced to admit that the thousands of samples analyzed have exonerated pesticides of being any sort of significant factor. There's simply no correlation, no pattern at all between incidence of CCD and the trace levels of pesticides found in the samples.
They'll keep looking, but so far, pesticides are just not a good suspect. After all their work, the independent findings of the teams working on CCD have yielded a much more detailed and extensive sampling of bees, pollen, honey, and wax than anything that the EPA would ever require prior to approval of a pesticide.
The data and evidence the scientists have points to one or more invasive exotic opportunistic disease pathogens from the other side of the planet that came to North America with so-called "free trade". Rather than pointing the finger at the EPA and Bayer, the evidence is piling up that the entire system of "World Trade" as it now exists is to blame for the deaths of the honey bees. The US does not even try inspect imports for "biosecurity", and those who ship goods to the US have no incentive to spend any money to assure that there are no hitchhiking disease pathogens in the shipments. They make larger profits, and our bees die. Its called "externalizing costs while internalizing profits". They are externalizing what should be their costs on our bees. They profit, beekeepers go bankrupt, and you pay more for food. Sound fair to you? Thought not.
So, in filing this lawsuit, the NRDC is either being very cynical, or very stupid.
If the NRDC is being cynical, they are suing the EPA simply to call attention to themselves, and create a basis for more fundraising to support their own agenda. They wouldn't be the first group to point to the problems we beekeepers are experiencing and shout "See? The Bees are dying - we were right all along!". Just about every "environmentalist" group that exists has postured and posed in a similar matter, and they've raised millions of dollars for themselves using honey bees and beekeepers as their poster children. But not a one of them have offered even a dime of all that money to help pay for research to find the causes of the problems. We beekeepers call this little scam the "Pollinator Protection Racket". They posture and pose, and pretend to be concerned, but they keep the money, and do what they please with it.
If the NRDC is being stupid, their utter lack of scientific and investigative competency has prompted them to, in good faith, file a suit simply because they are too uninformed to read the science journals, too stubborn to ask a few questions before causing the clear-cutting of several more forests for the massive amounts of paper required to sue a government agency like the EPA in federal court, and too out of touch with reality to even know how to ask nicely for what they want.
But not to worry, we beekeepers are here to help. I can end the lawsuit right here and now, by telling the NRDC where the information they seek can be found. Its at their nearest college or public library. There is a scientific journal named The Journal of Economic Entomology, and in it's June 2007 issue, on pages 765-772, there is a paper titled "Exposure to Clothianidin Seed-Treated Canola Has No Long-Term Impact on Honey Bees" by G. Christopher Cutler and Cynthia Scott-Dupree of the University of Guelph, in Canada.
Here's the abstract.
How do I know this? I simply called Bayer Cropscience and asked. Yep, one phone call from a mere beekeeper was all it took. Studies that are "required" by the EPA are nearly always published in science journals. The pesticide companies want the data they submit to the EPA to be peer-reviewed, and thereby recognized as legitimate and accurate.
If beekeepers know that, the NRDC should have known it too, as they certainly have sued the EPA often enough to learn how the pesticide approval process works.
So, NRDC can drop their lawsuit, and save us taxpayers a whole truckload of money by not forcing the EPA to show up in court to defend itself. We've also saved the several metric tons of paper typically consumed in a federal lawsuit, a few man-years of hapless court-clerk time, and we saved the NRDC lots of money that they can now give to the Eastern Apicultural Society Bee Research Fund, as the NRDC doesn't need to pay for the lawsuit.
Might Bayer be lying? Highly doubtful. Unlike the NRDC and their ilk, Bayer has been supporting the efforts of the scientists trying to find the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, providing proprietary trade-secret technical information about the pesticides that groups like the NRDC think are the cause of the problems. Why would Bayer suddenly start lying now, after 2 years of bending over backwards to lend a hand?
Now, am I being hard on the NRDC? No, not a bit. they were given more than a chance to get a clue, I handed them the clues on a silver platter. I called the NRDC before I wrote this, but their spokesman wanted to argue rather than listen.
Big mistake.
So, the syndrome the NRDC needs to study is the collapse of their own credibility, rather than the collapse of bee hives. Let's call it "Credibility Collapse Disorder".
The Real Problem With Pesticides
But is the NRDC right to be concerned about pesticides? Of course they are! Pesticide misuse (mostly spraying during daylight hours near or on blooming flowers) is a serious problem, and has been for decades. The EPA does a lousy job of enforcing the laws that are supposed to protect honey bees and all the other beneficial insects. But the EPA can only do what the administration allows, and the current administration has gutted the EPA, making it a mere shadow of its former self. Such problems are best solved by voting for a new administration not in denial about environmental issues.
Despite accusations to the contrary, the better-informed beekeepers have seen reduced pesticide problems as a result of the release of the newer "systemic" pesticides. The reason is simple - pesticides that are not sprayed pose a much lower risk of being improperly used, and pose an inherently lower risk to bees.
So, come on NRDC - get with the program. If you want to help the bees, cough up some of that dough you've been raising "to save the bees". But please don't file lawsuits on our behalf, and please don't claim that your lawsuits "help" us. And don't pretend that the money you are raising will be used to help "save the bees" unless you put every dime of that money into the hands of scientists that are working on the problem.
Otherwise, the NRDC will suffer from further "Credibility Collapse Disorder", and the symptoms will include beekeepers and the press asking just what you planned to do with all that money you've been raising "for the bees".
'Cause lawsuits aren't going to save any bees.
Only science can save them.
And we beekeepers know better than anyone else the old line about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar.
But if you need any more super-secret data on pesticides and honey bees, feel free to ask, and we'll be happy to make you photocopies of what we get at the library.
