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  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Bluestem Prairie: MN Senate rolls back pollinator protections, makes bee losses to neonicitinoids a punchline
  • Date: Sat, 16 May 2015 21:28:37 -0400

Bluestem Prairie: MN Senate rolls back pollinator protections, makes bee
losses to neonicitinoids a punchline
http://www.bluestemprairie.com/bluestemprairie/2015/05/mn-senate-rolls-back-pollinator-protections-makes-bee-losses-to-neonicitinoids-a-punchline.html

"Not long ago, MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow observed that “the Minnesota
Senate is a weirder place than I imagined it might be,”
<http://www.advocate.com/politics/2015/04/19/rachel-maddow-spoofs-minnesota-senates-no-eye-contact-rule>
when covering its no-eye contact rule.

After yesterday's "gag amendment" on an ag policy bill, Bluestem thinks
that the place is even more unfathomable than that--and we hope readers
will let the Governor know that Minnesotans don't think bee deaths
<http://m.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2015/05/40-percent-us-honeybees-died-over-past-year>
are a joke.

The Star Tribune's Josephine Marcotty reports in Minnesota Senate pulls
back on pollinator protection
<http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-senate-pulls-back-on-pollinator-protection/303790251/>
:

With a little discussion and a lot of kidding around about bees, the
Minnesota Senate passed a bill Thursday that says plants sold as
“pollinator friendly” don’t need to be free of insecticides.

The new language, which scales back bee legislation passed just last year,
was included in the 2015 agriculture omnibus bill, which passed
unanimously. The bill passed the House on Monday and now heads to Gov. Mark
Dayton. Dayton’s office said Thursday that he’s aware of the issue and
expects it to become part of end-of-session negotiations at the mansion on
the state budget.

The new provision modifies a law passed in 2014, which said that plant
nurseries could not market plants as bee- and butterfly-friendly if they
are grown with the controversial class of pesticides called neonicotinoids.
That class of pesticides has been implicated in the global decline of
honeybees and other insects.

But the Minnesota Nursery and Landscape Association successfully pushed
back with a provision, added to the House agriculture bill, that will allow
nurseries to use the label on plants as long as they are not toxic enough
to kill an adult honeybee outright.

We had noted this was coming up in our post, What's a little poison between
friends? Industry to have way with MN pollinator-friendly labeling
<http://www.bluestemprairie.com/bluestemprairie/2015/05/whats-a-little-poison-between-friends-industry-to-have-way-with-bee-friendly-labeling-for-mn-consume.html>
.

But the Senators didn't stop at rolling back a modest pollinator-friendly
consumer labeling law. They went farther, mocking the situation of bees
during the same week in which KSTP and others reported More than 50 Percent
of Minn. Bee Hives Died in Past Year
<http://kstp.com/article/stories/s3795192.shtml>."



  • [permaculture] Bluestem Prairie: MN Senate rolls back pollinator protections, makes bee losses to neonicitinoids a punchline, Lawrence London, 05/16/2015

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