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Re: [SANET-MG] are gm crops killing bees



Hello Shane Morris Senior Consumer Analyst for Agriculture Canada and co-author of an award winning paper in the British Food Journal. It is always a treat to respond to government bureaucrats seeking to influence public opinion. As, I am sure you aware, my repeated comment on the honey bee decline disaster was that the US NRC report had neglected the impact of pesticides and GM crops in their report which certainly influences the funding of research. There is a long list of pesticides that influence the health and the behavior of bees. There has been less research on the influence of the pesticides in GM crops containing Bt toxins and those requiring herbicides ( herbicides like insecticides are known to effect bee health). It seems to me the Canadian bureaucrats are fluttering about trying to pretend that pesticides and GM crops are not factors in the bee disaster. The Canadian bureaucrats seem to follow the famous dictum of the Editor of the British Food Journal who declared that there is a common misconception that science is about facts. At this point in time the stated preference for public relations over facts seems to me a major contributer to government supported research leading to blind alleys and hastening the ultimate disaster, extinction of honey bees. sincerely, joe cummins
Shane Morris wrote:
I'm no entomologist, epidemiology expert or Joe Cummins but I find it difficult to jusify blaming GM pollen when similar colony collapses are now been reported across the EU where is there is a distinct lack of GM pollen in the environment....see news piece below from tomorrows Irish
Times....


Bee colonies may be under threat
Seán Mac Connell, Agriculture Correspondent
Fri, Apr 06, 2007

As beekeepers across Europe have reported massive losses of colonies,
the Department of Agriculture has appealed to beekeepers here to
contact them if they they are having similar losses.

The huge losses are a result of either colony collapse disorder
(CCD), a disease that has already hit the US stocks very hard, or a
new form of Varroa destructor, a mite that attacks bees.

In London, it was reported this week that about 4,000 hives, two-
thirds of the bee colonies in the capital, are estimated to have died
over the winter when the normal mortality rate is about 15 per cent.

Britain's department for environment, food and rural affairs said its
special investigation unit has found that 30 per cent of hives
inspected so far have been lost, twice the winter loss rate.

In the US, 50 per cent of the honeybee colonies have been wiped out
by CCD and hundreds of thousands of colonies have collapsed in Spain.
Beekeepers in Poland, Greece, Croatia, Switzerland, Italy and
Portugal have also reported heavy losses.

A department spokesman in Dublin said it has been monitoring the
reports of CCD that had been coming from the Continent and
Britain. "We are unaware of any major losses of colonies here, but
many beekeepers would not have opened up their hives yet after the
winter," he said.

He said one of the major problems when CCD occurs is that no trace of
the bees is left in a hive and this was a stumbling block for
scientific research. "We want to know instantly if there have been
losses here and I would ask beekeepers to report to us or to Teagasc
if they think their colonies have been hit by CCD." Ireland is only
recovering from its first ever outbreak of Varroa disease, which
struck here in the late 1990s and did enormous damage to stocks.

© 2007 The Irish Times

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