On Tuesday this week I was in Brussels, for a press conference to launch a major series of scientific publications on the impacts of neonicotinoid insecticides on the environment. On the same day, press conferences were also held in Manila, Tokyo and Ottawa. The publications are the culmination of 5 years work involving more than 50 scientists from 4 continents, and together we reviewed evidence from >800 scientific papers. Our findings are being published as 7 papers in a special issue of the journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research. All have been accepted for publication following full, independent, scientific peer-review. The first of the seven is online now at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-014-3180-5; this deals with impacts on vertebrates. The rest of the papers will appear soon as the journal finishes processing them for publication.
The conclusions of our work, in brief, are that these systemic pesticides are accumulating in soils and polluting waterways and natural vegetation across the world, leading to widespread impacts on wildlife inhabiting farmland and aquatic habitats. There is also growing evidence that much of their use is unnecessary and ineffective. But you can read all about this over the coming months as the papers come out: all of them are to be open access.
On Monday, the day before the press conference and before anyone could have seen the full set of documents, I received a rebuttal of our work from Croplife, an organisation that represents the agrochemical industry. It was quite clear that they hadn’t read any of it. Their criticisms were: that the work was selective in what it reviewed (we looked at 800 papers, everything that we could find); that we looked only at lab studies (a bizarre claim, and completely untrue); that we ignored the economic importance of neonicotinoids and didn’t consider how farmers would cope without them (there is a whole paper in the WIA just on this topic).
We have also been criticised because not all of our papers are yet available. Had this been a single report, just placed on the internet without scientific review, we could easily have made it all available. This is what industry usually does. But the scientific review and editing process is slow and not all of the papers were quite ready. On the plus side, they have the huge advantage that they have all passed independent scrutiny.
On Wednesday, Syngenta launched a request to the UK government for an exemption to the European moratorium. They want to treat 186,000 hectares of oilseed rape woth a neonicotinoid – 30% of the UK crop – because they say that otherwise there is a “danger to production”. There appears to be no scientific evidence to back up this claim. Indeed, just a week ago on 18 June an industry spokesman appeared before the UK’s Environmental Audit Committee and was asked to provide a single scientific study showing that neonicotinoid seed dressings increased yield of any arable crop. Embarrassingly, he could not. They’ve been selling neonics for 20 years, but can provide no evidence that they work!? How do they differ from the quack doctors of days gone by, who peddled cure-alls on street corners with their slick patter?
One can read Syngenta’s request another way – they seem to be conceding that 70% of the UK’s oilseed rape doesn’t need treating with neonics. Why then was 100% treated before the moratorium?
This simply appears to be a ploy by industry to bypass the EU moratorium, which was based on sound scientific evidence, and recommended by the European Food Standards Agency. If you’d like to sign a petition against their request, go to: https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/a-ban-is-a-ban