[Ben Brewcat]

From one of our local club presidents via Tom Theobald. Follow the link to email the EPA and submit a comment.

Pesticide Problems We NEED your help!:

Tom Theobald, the beekeeping conscience of the pesticide industry has just contacted me with a request to get some support rallied for an effort to keep a particular new pesticide off of the market. To make a very long story somewhat succinct, a pesticide, spirotetramat, was approved by the EPA for distribution. The Xerces Society and the Natural Resource Defense Council sued the EPA on the grounds that they had failed to adequately test the chemical and that they had failed to provide a public comment period as prescribed by federal law. The following is an excerpt from the court decision. The entire decision is attached (see link, below).

"In the registration process, the EPA identified concerns about the insecticide’s effect on bees. The EPA’s review of
tests exposing honeybees to spirotetramat found, inter alia, “increased mortality in adults and pupae, massive perturbation of brood development, early brood development, and decreased larval abundance.” The EPA further found that insecticides that inhibit lipid biosynthesis have “potential for chronic effectson bee broods and development” and “may adversely affect bee broods and development;” and in 2007 the EPA found there is
“uncertainty regarding the potential chronic effects of spirotetramat on pollinators because no long-term data were
available.” By the time the EPA made its registration decision in June 2008, it had reviewed additional studies on
spirotetramat’s chronic effect on bees, but it still found the data lacking because the chronic effect studies tested
spirotetramat at levels lower than the label-recommended application rate."

The bottom line is that the court ruled in favor of the Xerces Society and the NRDC and the EPA is soliciting public comment on the product, and disposal of existing stocks, until Monday February 8th. Please, if you read this in time, file a public comment. Use this link to file a comment. You may have to copy and paste it into your browser window, I did. www.epa.gov/opprd001/factsheets/spirotetramat-canc-order.pdf If you would like to familiarize yourself more with the chemical itself, please type its name into your search engine. You will find plenty.

 

[Ben Brewcat]

Peter are you saying it's safer than other alternatives, and this is just alarmism? I'm all for well-informed feedback, and the only information I had I relied on someone who's very well-informed and whose opinion I trust. Could you cite studies on its safe application for honeybees to help level the field? I'm not well-informed enough to know what "little or no crop safety effects" means, when it also seems to be toxic to honeybees and persist for weeks. www.epa.gov/opprd001/factsheets/spirotetramat.pdf. Some more data would help me make a better-informed decision; having been in use for only one to two growing seasons doesn't necessarily mean the book's been written on this one yet to my mind.

I also have to submit that I'm not terribly reassured that China, Colombia, Mexico, Tunisia, Turkey and New Zealand feel it's safe (with the possible exception of New Zealand. I know they're acutely active in trying to address the spread of varroa and of non-european honeybees, but I'm not familiar with their stance on protecting honeybees from pesticides). The first five, however... have they ever met an agricultural practice they didn't like, safe or not? Surely we're not trying to bring our practices up to Columbia's standard?

Just trying to keep up.