On Cotton and Citrus, EPA Chooses Activists Over Science

Posted on April 21, 2016 by Henry Miller, MD

The Environmental Protection Agency, which I have described elsewhere as “the worst regulatory agency in the history of the world,” sometimes does get things right. Well, sort of right.
That’s what happened earlier this year when it issued its “preliminary assessment” of imidacloprid, the first commercially available, widely used neonicotinoid pesticide (“neonic,” for short).

Neonics, 90 percent of which are applied as seed-treatments rather than sprayed on crops in the field, are taken up into the plant so that they target only the pests that feed on the crop, minimizing exposure to humans, animals, and beneficial insects. Hailed as a major technological and environmental breakthrough when introduced in the mid-1990s, neonics have lately been relentlessly condemned by anti-pesticide activists, who claim they’re causing a “bee-pocalypse” — a widespread decimation of bee populations.

Those claims have by now been thoroughly debunked. (See, for example, this and this.) Globally, the number of honey bee colonies has risen steadily for more than half a century— and specifically for the entire 20 years that neonics have been on the market; and most scientists agree that habitat loss, disease, and parasites (particularly the deadly Varroa mite) are the major reasons why bees are currently at risk. Actual data seem not to deter the activists, who continue to pour enormous resources into a well-orchestrated regulatory, legal, and public relations campaign to get these popular, state-of-the-art pesticides banned.......To Read More......