Bayer/Monsanto/Synergy are killing our bees & butterflies
Photo Credit: Friends of the Earth
Who would have believed it? We would, those of us on the left who wrote about it and got squashed down. We didn't have the funding for the vast network of bought and paid scientists, scholars, revolving door regulators that Monsanto/Synergy had. But we believed the bee-keepers.
The dangerous decline in our pollinators, bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects has not spurred any meaningful regulation and there's a reason for that revealed by Friends of the Earth in a new report. The Bayer/Monsanto/Synergy made sure there would be no such regulations as they lobbied to protect their $bn industries. They were everywhere, lobbying state and federal governments, inside academia, the regulatory agencies, bee protection groups, and the biotech industry. Shockingly: the industries even visited elementary schools and gave tours to The Girl Scouts to promote their ineffective, fake "save the pollinators" campaign..
BUZZ KILL: How the Pesticide Industry is Clipping the Wings of Bee Protection Efforts Across the US.
Industry efforts appear to be working: Rather than strong federal regulations to reverse bee declines, what is emerging is a patchwork of state programs and policies that lack speci c enforceable regulations regarding pesticide use. This allows regulators and companies to appear as if they are taking action while, in fact, doing little to reverse bee losses.Syngenta
$13.4 billion
Monsanto
$15 billion
DuPont
$25.1 billion
Dow Chemical
$48.8 billion
Bayer
$52.76 billion
The White House did plant a pollinator garden
First Lady Michelle Obama Gets Milkweed as White House Adds First Pollinator Garden
“A pollinator garden helps to encourage the production of bees and Monarch butterflies. They pollinate the plants, they help the plants grow,” said the First Lady. “They’re dying because of disease–we don’t even know why some beehives are just totally disappearing.”
That was two years ago, beekeepers knew then. Beekeepers found their bees were disoriented and could not find their way back to the hives after nearby spraying of Monsanto/Bayer/Synergy poisons.
Please read the report., it's short and it's full of pictures.
The original article appeared in Common Dreams:
Exposed: Pesticide Industry Deployed Aggressive Lobby Effort to Quash Bee Protections
Comments
Expose'
on Empire files was dead on target. It's not just the bees...it's humans too. Corporate to Gov't treadmill is also revealed ...like C Thomas and Rumsfeld.
24 min
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTi0_ZQtPTY]
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
That was good, thanks, but hard to take at the same time
what can we do when up against multi-billion dollar companies?
To thine own self be true.
Thank you for the video!
That is an excellent (and frightening) piece. Romney, Rumsfeld, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II...and Obama.
scary but informative
The empire files also have a great piece on Hellery if you can take it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PV_PLCC6jeI
Glad you and MW liked the vid.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I have limited attention
because I am a finite being, so I have tended to focus on the climate problem because we have only a limited time before the damage causes mass suffering. But sometimes I wonder if this is more important. We can't deal with the climate problem if we don't have any food...
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
We Can Deal with Both
at the same time.
K-6 school garden curriculums have been teaching this
since mid 90's...as a former volunteer thru my county's Cooperative Extension I taught/trained school garden education/educators for many years. Laws curbing conventional usage of pesticides w/i schools went into effect in 2000 (Healthy Schools Act/HSA) and California's Department of Pesticide Regulations has had to transform it's role in order to abide by law and provide ongoing trainings for landscaping personnel, and which has since expanded to also include child care centers and senior living complexes.
In 1995, California's State Superintendent of Schools, Delaine Eastin, infamously said California needs "a garden in every school." That demand was heeded not by local school district boards or funding but by parent volunteers who developed/maintained amazing programs via fundraisers and community partnerships. Thousands of schools across the state now offer organic outdoor education yet most programs are still cobbled together annually by school volunteers.
California's HSA also demanded school districts develop a system of notifying parents and school staff prior to every pesticide application, which was/remains problematic for many school districts, with some like mine periodically refusing to recognize they're required by law to change their landscaping practices/implement IPM/notify prior/keep records of applications. Because despite that school board policies and administrative regulations have been adopted to enact a less toxic approach to landscape maintenance, Facility Directors seem to have a love affair with RoundUp and don't want anyone messing with their ability to use it. And that Michelle Obama installed a garden, yay to that, but regarding her knowledge of impacts of pesticides, that head of hers is politically stuck in the sand. Shameful I say.
That's great! I'm sure that schools in the rest of
the USA do not need to get visits from representatives of Bayer/Monsanto/Synergy and other corporations teaching them about pollination. They never mention pesticides.
POLLINATING MISINFORMATION: INDUSTRY IN OUR SCHOOLS
To thine own self be true.
Roundup is the most used chemical formula in North America
and parts of it are in all of our bodies. It's got to stop.
To thine own self be true.
“They’re dying because of disease ???
said the First Lady. “They’re dying because of disease–
we don’t even know why some beehives are just totally disappearing.” Said Michele Obullshitmama.
What a crock of crap. We've known for decades what pesticides do to insects like bees and butterflies. It really pisses me off when our "leaders" lie straight to our faces.
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She is just repeated the corporate jargon
that the cause is varro mites. Just like poison making corporations blame the severe decline of bats on "white nose" (a fungal disease) and never mention that their products have a major part in causing the decline.
To thine own self be true.
Pesticides have detrimental effects on everything
Silent Spring - Rachel Carson, 1962 - Wikipedia
I read this as a teenager. It has a profound and lasting effect. These goddamned corporations need to be taken apart. The lobbyists and legislators all need to be in prison.
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