
Wik-Bee Leaks: EPA Knowingly Allowed Pesticide That Kills Honey Bees - monkeygrinder
http://www.fastcompany.com/1708896/wiki-bee-leaks-epa-document-reveals-agency-knowingly-allowed-use-of-bee-toxic-pesticide
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JanezStupar
There is corporate "ethos" and "greed is good" etc... But what I find
disturbing is that these wankers (corporate and government) are stupid/greedy
enough to fuck over honeybees.

The same honeybees that are providing us with 1 in 3 meals every single
friggin day! Maybe big-pharma is confident that it can feed the humanity - but
I see it as an incredibly shortsighted strategy that WILL cause us our lives -
before global warming or nukes - since we're apparently trying extremely hard
to exterminate the little critters.

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InclinedPlane
_"The same honeybees that are providing us with 1 in 3 meals every single
friggin day!"_

 _citation needed_

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JanezStupar
Citation:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1702377/figure/f...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1702377/figure/fig2/)

In old days every farmer in our village had a beehive - the honey and
pollination services were both much appreciated. My father has always taught
me that killing a bee is a horrible crime.

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InclinedPlane
This describes the important of pollinators, but honey bees are not the only
pollinators. I don't see enough evidence supporting the case that honey bees
exclusively are responsible for pollinating 1/3 of all food, nor that the
absence of honey bees would reduce food production by the same amount (which
seem to be the positions you have put forth).

Can you support those claims?

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JanezStupar
Can you support a contra position? That bees are not significant pollinators?
Please do not forget other Apidae family members - they probably don't benefit
from pesticides either.

Oh... Another reference: <http://www.pnas.org/content/99/26/16812.full> \- you
can check references [6,7] yourself.

Edit: I apologize - since I did limit my rant to honeybees initially.

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jcromartie
Honeybees are not native to the US. It would be odd to rely on a non-native
species for our food supply.

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btilly
Why would it be odd? When Europeans arrived they imported European agriculture
and cuisine, most of which is non-native.

For instance I had pancakes for breakfast this morning. The eggs were from
non-native chickens, the milk from non-native cows, the flour from non-native
wheat, the canola oil I cooked it in from non-native rapeseed, and the butter
I put on it from non-native cows. However all is not lost, I used maple syrup
from native maple trees, and put blackberries in it that might have been
native. (The baking powder and salt are chemicals that to the best of my
knowledge do not come from animals or plants, native or otherwise.)

 _Edit:_ When I looked up blackberries I found out that there are several
hundred species, and some of the popular ones for cultivation are not native.
So I don't know whether that was a native berry.

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wdewind
I think what he means to say is there was food here before honey bees, there
can be food here after honey bees.

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Alex3917
Considering the EPA's past lies about the air quality at ground zero, the
mercury levels in fresh water fish, etc., let's just say that if you believe
anything they say then I've got a boat load of perfectly safe shrimp from the
gulf to sell you.

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jonprins
Not to mention their stance on
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing> .

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maukdaddy
FYI the ORIGINAL Grist article much better and full of detail:

[http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-12-10-leaked-
document...](http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-12-10-leaked-documents-
show-epa-allowed-bee-toxic-pesticide-)

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BrandonM
Is there any reason these beekeepers can't sue Bayer and the EPA for the side
effects of the pesticides? Couldn't such a suit call for an injunction
preventing its use pending the results of the lawsuit?

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extension
They did sue Bayer in 2003, though for a different drug. The suit was thrown
out by a judge in 2008. Info in this article:

[http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.for...](http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm)

Bayer gets sued all the time and they are probably pretty good at working the
legal system.

~~~
julian37
This article has additional history:

<http://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=598>

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alecco
I don't understand how politicians are allowed to campaign with corporate
money.

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sp332
(I know this is naive, but) Corporations are made of people. All that money
belongs to someone. So if those people decide to give that money to
politicians, why does that make problems?

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alecco
In general, publicly traded corporations are run by people aiming to get
bonuses by maximizing shareholder value. Those shareholders could be very
indirect, in particular for pension funds.

With this level of abstraction, the final shareholders usually are not (or
don't want to be) aware of things done in their name. The situation makes it
very easy to look the other way.

IMHO, Adam Smith would be disgusted about this.

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qeorge
Related?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1774592>

The timing seems incredible.

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byteclub
That's ok, we'll just replace honey with high-fructose corn syrup - problem
solved!

