ECOJUSTICE, PMRA & MORE NEONICOTONOIDS

Ecojustice were in court yesterday trying to get the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) to follow Canadian law. It appears that just like at the municipal level, governments try to skirt around inconvenient legislation all the time. Hence the PMRA approved Thiamethoxam for use on crops prematurely. Thiamethoxam is one of a group of pesticides known as neonicotonoids which have been proven at least partly responsible for bee dieoffs over the last decade. The old adage that sometimes the medicine is worse than the disease has been proven accurate in regards to pesticides and herbicides for decades. Think especially of DDT and Agent Orange, the first a pesticide (insecticide) and the second a herbicide. DDT kills mosquitoes and hence reduces malaria outbreaks. Unfortunately it is both persistent in the environment and moves up the food chain causing egg thinning in birds of prey. Agent Orange is a mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T and is a brush and weed killer both for use along power corridors and highways as well as for killing crops and reducing tree canopies along the Ho Che Minh trail in Vietnam decades ago.

Bees play an important part in agriculture as they are responsible for the pollination of crops by their transfer of pollen from plant to plant in their search for food. Bee dieoffs are costing farmers and the public reduced crop yields and the potential for major losses of production.