Channel 4 News now... item coming up

[Nellie]

colony kisses

stupid phone, should of course be colony losses.

Way to argue a point Brosville, there's a difference between not agreeing that the evidence is there to link current use of neonics and colony losses (overall, the case in Germany is well documented) and believing that they're harmless to non target insects.

 

[Brosville]

Simple maths shows that if 'phone masts are dangerous, then mobile 'phones are thousands of times more harmful - that doesn't mean to say that either are harmless, but it's wise to look at simple and provable facts.

It all comes down to the fact that there has never been very little independent research into the effects of "icides", and the present government attitude is to pass their products "on the nod", which flies in the face of the scientific notion of "caution". Certainly no work is done on "cocktail" effects, which to my mind is a dreadful idiocy - common fungicides can make the effects of neonicotinoids over 1,000 times more potent for instance.

We have been subjected to insidious publicity from the chemical lobbies for decades to suggest that their products are harmless, indispensable, and that life as we know it would cease overnight without them, which if examined closely is utter nonsense - some 70% of the world is fed without them,(and the attendant dangers......)

Agenda? - am I suspicious of "Big Pestco" - of course I am, I fail to see how anyone couldn't be - they are multinational companies out for a buck - at any cost - this is the industry that gave us DDT, Zyklon B, Mustard gas, Nerve gas, and organophosphates..........

 

[BobH1]

"However the jury is still out" - indeed it is, the Channel 4 "story" claims pesticides are blameless, which is unproven, and a twisting of the truth

I don't know how you can say this. First the news article did not claim pesticides are blameless and said nothing about long term effects: what it said was -"Insecticides aren't to blame for the decline of Britain's bees", which they quite clearly are not as there is no decline. Secondly Pettis was quite clear that he could not repeat his evidence of a link in the field.

The jury is not out.

 

[Brosville]

Noone has definitively proved safety of pesticides, or the lack of it - therefore the jury IS still firmly out!

As Pettis himself says, he suspects it's the interaction of at least 3 factors (one of which IS pesticides) - but Channel 4 left that out.........

 

[Nellie]

I guess I am asking what's the motive of putting out a statement that basically just says we still don't know what causes CCD?

there's a campaign going to ban neonics on the basis that they're proven, in proper use, to cause colony deaths?

In that context it's news worthy. People wanted and got an EDM to discuss it and presumably off the back of that FERA (thanks Poly) et al were asked to look into it. Pettis' original lab study formed much of the basis of that campaign so it seems sensible that they'd ask his opinion too.

Two words in the conclusions strike me as important, "so far". So I don't think that it means everything's fine and we should just move on and stop looking, but that perhaps on current evidence fixating solely on Apis mellifera and neonicotinoids might be missing the bigger picture.

 

[Brosville]

for once I agree with you about "missing the bigger picture" - I still suspect neonicotinoids as being a particularly toxic and dangerous substance which should be removed from the market pending proof that it is completely safe, but they are just one part of the systematic destruction of our environment by industrial agriculture - the horrors of monocultures, destruction of hedgerows and other habitats, all in the pursuit of profit.
We need desperately to look towards providing our food sustainably, and allow life to return to the green chemicalised concrete which much of our countryside has become, before it's too late - neonics are a symptom of a far larger problem.....

 

[Nellie]

And on the general point I don't disagree with you either.

My concern with banning neonicotinoids "just in case" is it means the widescale reintroduction of classes of pesticides we know for sure are at least as harmful to bees and other non target insects as well as more harmful to birds, mammals etc. So at the moment from that point of view they appear to be a lesser of two evils.

 

[BobH1]

We need desperately to look towards providing our food sustainably, and allow life to return to the green chemicalised concrete which much of our countryside has become, before it's too late .....

And we can only do this by changing society, banning "neonics" or blaming "Pestco" is not the way to do that.

 

[greatbritishhoney]

The problem with any research into problems like this is that the research costs so much and is often funded by not-so-impartial sources.

But we must be scientific about it - "no evidence" does not mean there is not a problem, it just means that a theory has not been proved one way or the other.

 

[Brosville]

"means the widescale reintroduction of classes of pesticides" with the present shower in power (power shower, - geddit?) you're probably right - sadly that need not be the case, as has been proved for years, crops can (and should) be grown with no "icide" inputs at all.
As for the likely relative "safety" of neonics - I suspect that when this is all "history" they will be seen to be far more deleterious than the older "cruder" pesticides to a whole raft of living things (including us!)

 

[Nellie]

Thats an argument I've yet to be convinced about either but I'm open to persuasion. If crop yields can be maintained or increased without recourse to pesticides why are they in such widescale use?

Im not a farmer but I do run a business and I'd be taking any suggestion that I could cut out a bunch of costs, time and effort to maintain the same output very seriously.

As for the long term view on neonics, who knows? I don't have a crystal ball but it seems there's a lot of research trying to prove, unsuccessfully, that they're dangerous at the moment rather than attempting to illustrate their safety so who knows, I'm certainly not advocating that people stop looking.

 

[Dishmop]

so I am curious as to what may have arisen from the meeting.
Tricia

being cynical...... a good free lunch I suppose....

 

[Brosville]

From my own perspective (I spent some time in farming a while back), the pressures from the Min of Ag and Fish and the NFU were strongly in favour of "chemicals with everything", and positively discouraging of organics - and the animosity if you chose to "do it naturally" was quite incredible, so the pressure is there to "toe the line, don't rock the boat"
What we now now as "organics" proves that you can grow very successfully without "icides", but sadly even the present form of that is often still far too energy intensive, but is at least part of the way to true sustainability - people written off as "drippy 'ippies" (permaculturalists) are demonstrating that it's relatively simple to double the output per acre by using virtually no "inputs" but using instead some crafty planning and husbandry - if a fraction of the funds lavished on research into high tech farming were spent in that sort of direction, and some real will be shown by government to declare independence from "Big Ag", then higher yields are entirely possible, and sustainable for millenia - unlike industrial farming which is a short-term hiding to nothing....

We should have taken the opportunity to become Europe's organic centre a quarter of a century ago - sadly we missed the boat, and Germany did it instead....... there are no fortunes to be made in pushing organic/ sustainable farming, unlike the companies keen to get growers locked into using/buying their products.

 

[Rosti]

Brosville, I'd like to pick up on a point you have made in this thread. The words 'organic' and 'naturally' do not belong in the same sentence. I have no axe to grind about either a conventional agronmic approach or indeed an organic philosophy; but given the historic high dependency of organic farming on both copper and sulphur compounds it is anything but 'natural'. If you then overlay some of the significant strides forward that have been made concerning intergrated pest management programs within conventional (particularly protected crops) then the distinction becomes even more muddied (and yes, I have current direct knowledge and experience).

 

[Brosville]

Oh lordy - we could chase our own tails over the semantics - "natural" according to a feed rep of my acquaintance can legally encompass laboratory made substances (as long as they also occur in nature).
"Organic" as I've already said isn't "perfect" (still uses far too much in the way of fossil fuel inputs), but has evolved to be what it's proponents deem "as close as you can get to "natural" (which is a much used and abused word) - in fact I point out that "Natural Beekeeping" is a misnomer, the best it can be is more natural.......