Market Farming

[Leigh Hauter <bullrunfarm AT hughes.net>]

Unfortunately as you must know, Richard,  being so well informed, 
Bayer has not conducted the testing necessary for their chemical to 
be certified for use as a pesticide.  Back eight years ago in 2003 
Bayer was given a 'conditional registration' by Bush's EPA 
administrators contingent on the German corporation successfully 
conducting field studies assessing whether this insecticide poses a 
threat to bee colony health.

Eight years has passed and Bayer has not performed any studies that 
fulfill this requirement.  Bayer did turn in several reports but the 
EPA found that they were unsound and Bayer still needed to conduct 
tests for their chemical to be given a permanent registration.

Regardless of Bayer's inability to property test their chemical the 
EPA was still considering expanding Bayer's certification. In other 
words, this large foreign chemical company was being allowed to break 
the law, to put their product on the market, to sell it for more and 
more situations without it having to prove it was safe for bees. 
That is until last winter!

Last winter an internal EPA memo was leaked to the public. The memo 
reported that Bayer was not only unable to prove its product safe, 
but the original testing guidelines (the ones Bayer couldn't pass) 
were too weak, were insufficient to test whether clothyianidin 
contributes to CCD.

In other words,  after eight years of trying Bayer has failed to pass 
tests showing that  clothyianidin is safe for bees and that  those 
original tests  (the ones Bayer's product can't pass) are in fact 
not rigorous enough..

Finally,  Richard,  I don't know if you are a beekeeper or not 
however I am (I've been keeping upwards to a hundred hives for almost 
30 years now). This year's winter die off rate due to CCD is the 
worst yet.  Personally, I have never experienced anything so bad. 
The cost of replacing this winter's loss looks like it might be in 
the tens of thousands of dollars.  Add to that the cost of past 
year's losses we're talking real money.

When I hear that the EPA has allowed Bayer to make millions of 
dollars by failing to follow the law. That it has not been able to 
create guidelines to prevent its chemical from causing economic harm 
to me and other beekeepers  (we are not even talking about the 
general environmental harm yet), I get very upset.

I don't see much difference between the EPA allowing Bayer to market 
and make money from a product that might be costing me tens of 
thousands of dollars than the local police letting a junky hit me 
over the head, steal my wallet and then use my credit cards.  Both 
are criminal activities, both cause other people economic harm.

Bayer's product should be taken off the market until Bayer can prove 
that it is safe.  If it can't, Bayer should compensate all beekeepers 
for their losses and compensate the American people for the damage to 
our environment.  The people at the EPA that  allowed Bayer to skirt 
the law should be immediately fired whether this product in the end 
proves safe or not. There is no room in government for administrators 
to forget that they are there to serve the public.
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        http://www.bullrunfarm.com/

"Sometimes the world seems on the verge of insanity, and one wonders what
limit there can be to greed, aggression, deception and the thirst for power
or fame.  When reflections of this sort threaten one's serenity one can be
glad for the bees, for the riches they yield to the spirit of those who love
nature and feel their kinship with everything that creeps and swims and
flies, that spins and builds, to all living things that arise and perish, to
the whole of creation of which we are only a part, like the bees."
Richard Taylor,
The Joys of Beekeeping, 1974.