A couple of years ago, if you bought a flowering plant at a big-box store, it likely attracted bees and butterflies — and possibly killed them.
Lowe’s and Home Depot were marketing plants for butterfly gardens that contained a systemic pesticide known to harm bees and other pollinators.
Slowly though, research — some of it in Tucson — and public opinion are changing corporate practices. That’s important because several factors — pesticides prominent among them — are killing off bees, butterflies and other pollinators at alarming rates.
On Tuesday, Ortho announced it would begin phasing out pesticides using neonicotinoids, the category of pesticide shown by scientists to harm bees and other pollinators. It’s the latest sign that the agrochemical industry’s defense of this group of pesticides — known as “neonics” — is starting to weaken as the case strengthens that they are harming insects crucial to our food supply and to nature in general.
Check out the phrasing of the announcement from Tim Martin, general manager of the Ortho brand, which belongs to parent company ScottsMiracle-Gro:
“This decision comes after careful consideration regarding the range of possible threats to honey bees and other pollinators. While agencies in the United States are still evaluating the overall impact of neonics on pollinator populations, it’s time for Ortho to move on. As the category leader, it is our responsibility to provide consumers with effective solutions that they know are safe for their family and the environment when used as directed. We encourage other companies and brands in the consumer pest control category to follow our lead.”
It’s probably not coincidental that first Lowe’s, then Home Depot announced last year that they were beginning to phase out products containing neonicotinoids. Lowe’s said it would eliminate neonics from all products it carries within four years, and Home Depot said it was eliminating plants containing neonics by the end of 2018.
In other words, Ortho wouldn’t be able to sell neonics at many of the big chain stores soon anyway, so why try?
The case against neonics has grown steadily through the years, despite the efforts of manufacturers to use their influence to sow doubt. Last year, an international group of scientists called the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides published an analysis of 1,100 peer-review studies, an analysis that itself was peer-reviewed.
Their findings reinforced the existing perception: Neonics harm bees, butterflies and other organisms in new ways because of how they persist in plants and the soil, the way they break down into more harmful substances when eaten, and how even low doses of these neurotoxins can affect the way a bee, for example, finds its way to food and back to the hive.
Yet they remain predominant in agriculture — most corn seeds planted now are coated with a neonicotinoid product first, leaving vast acreages contaminated by the neurotoxins. And most over-the-counter pesticides don’t contain labels that could inform consumers they’re using potentially harmful neonics.
Would you recognize the names of active ingredients like clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam?
It’s been understandable and perhaps predictable that manufacturers of these pesticides are fighting back against the growing scientific consensus, in a way reminiscent of the debate over global warming. What’s been more alarming has been U.S. government hesitation to confront the issue more directly, even after President Obama made it a White House-level priority in 2014.
In June 2014, I wrote a column pointing out the reluctance of a Tucson lab, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, to dig into the effects of pesticides on bee populations. They preferred, I noted, to focus on another factor in bees’ decline, one that industry likes to blame more: varroa mites.
The mites really are an important factor — and, conveniently, they don’t have million-dollar P.R. machines working to defend them.
Last month, the Washington Post reported that two USDA bee researchers were disciplined for what they think was their focus on the politically touchy topic of neonics’ harmful affect on bees, rather than the politically correct research subject, mites.
But now the Tucson lab has at least one study looking at the effects of neonics on bee colonies.
Research entomologist William Meikle, who is leading the study, told me Tuesday “I’m looking at neonicotinoid pesticides, trying to understand how sublethal doses affect colony-level behavior.”
This is important because, unless a bee is directly hit with a high dose, most exposures will be indirect and have more elusive effects that interact with other problems, such as poor nutrition, to potentially affect the whole colony.
“When you talk about bee health, there are three main things: Agrochemical exposure, nutrition (the amount of forage), and pests and pathogens,” Meikle explained. “A lot of people fail to take account that hives are struggling in many places because of a combination of these factors.”
It’s politically easy to research mites and forage. Finally, we seem to be grappling with the best-financed factor of them all.
Ortho cuts chemical / A14
