April 5, 2013

expert reaction to the Environmental Audit Committee’s Pollinators and Pesticides report

Parliament’s cross-party Environmental Audit Committee has recommended introducing a precautionary moratorium on three neonicotinoid pesticides linked to the decline of pollinators.

Dr Nigel Raine, Reader in Animal Behaviour at Royal Holloway University of London, said:

“Insects provide essential pollination services worth at least £440 million to UK agriculture each year.  Pesticides are a critical tool to achieve high levels of crop production.  Both have clear benefits, so we need to ensure that pesticides are used in ways that minimises any detrimental impacts on insect pollinators.

“The weight of peer-reviewed scientific evidence suggests that field-relevant exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides can have adverse effects on bees.  In recent statements Defra appear to have set aside all of this evidence in favour of one unpublished in house study.  I’m pleased to see that the Environmental Audit Committee has taken a balanced view of the evidence.

“Bees are actually exposed to multiple pesticides when they go out to collect nectar and pollen from crops.  Policymakers need to consider the risks of exposure to combinations of pesticides, and the fact that some bee species are more sensitive to pesticides than others, as part of the risk assessment process.”

Prof David Goulson, Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Stirling, said:

“EAC are calling for a moratorium on neonicotinoid use, and hence are broadly in agreement with EFSA.  It seems that pretty much any independent review of this subject comes to the same conclusion – we should stop using these chemicals until we have much more convincing evidence that they are safe.  At present the balance of evidence suggests that they are very far from safe.

“Quite how Defra can justify its abstention in the recent EU vote, a decision seemingly based on the results of its own rushed, poorly designed, fatally compromised, and unpublished field study (rather than on the many much better, peer-reviewed and published scientific studies that are available) is beyond me.

“I particularly applaud the call for a return to “Integrated Pest Management” – whereby pesticide use is minimised by careful monitoring of pest problems, applying controls only when needed, and by encouraging natural enemies as far as possible.  Prophylactic use of neonicotinoids is contrary to all the principles of IPM.  Defra say that they are keen to encourage IPM, but IPM is not new – I was taught about it in the 1980s when I was an undergraduate.  We have been moving AWAY from it for the last 20 years or more, with farmers receiving much of their advice from agronomists who make most of their profit by selling agrochemicals.

“It is also nice to see attention being drawn to the long persistence and accumulation of these chemicals in soils.  Any toxic chemical with a half-life in excess of a thousand days is surely not safe to use, for it will inevitably build up and up in the environment.”