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.
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