Green | September 28, 2011 | 25 comments

Real journalism: Dan Rather reports on CCD and neonicotinoids

source: http://www.panna.org/blog/dan-rather-pesticides-bees

JanforGore
Full video report at the link

Last week, after many months of the kind of deep journalism that has become all too rare, Dan Rather’s investigative team aired a hard-hitting piece that lays bare the policy failures behind Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and zeros in on neonicotinoid pesticides. You can see the episode here.

The problem in five words? “The chemical companies do the testing.” To quote a key passage of this piece:

Rather: “The chemical companies do the testing?”
Beekeeper Steve Ellis: “Yes, they design the tests, they conduct the tests and they pay for the tests.”
Rather: “Not the EPA?”
Ellis: “Not the EPA.”


The politics behind how we regulate pesticides in the U.S. has a long history that runs deep. Yet this fact is simple: chemical companies test their own products for safety. And it should be a scandal.

More at the link
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25 comments // Real journalism: Dan Rather reports on CCD and neonicotinoids // Video

  • nardo1224
  • ReMarker
  • percipi224
    • +2
      percipi224  

    • monsanto et al don't care if the bees die. the plants they are creating with the patents on all the seeds don't produce more seed for you or I or farmers to plant, thus impeding the flow of cash and control to themselves. we don't need pollination if they do it in the factory controlled areas and control all the seed. Our local honey man lost half his bees and then again half his bees. He thought he was doing something wrong, he lost his business before he knew that the alfalfa near him was gmo altered with neonicitoids. There is a push for all of us if we can to have a bee hive. our town does not destroy any tree with bees in it, if they have to they move the bees carefully.

    • 8 months ago
  • Wyley_Wombat
    • +1
      Wyley_Wombat  

    • Whilst the honeybee is one of the best pollinating insects, there are others whose populations have been reduced. The flower fly, a fly that looks like a small wasp, was a nectar drinking insect that is pretty much gone in NJ. The hummingbird clearwing moths used to be frequent and now are seen only occasionally. When I was young the summer night sky would be so alive with lightning bugs they would rival the stars; no more, although they are still there, there are a lot less of them. All of this and more courtesy of corporate greed.

    • 8 months ago
  • artemis6
  • JanforGore
  • ecoalex
  • nowherefast
    • +1
      nowherefast  
    • ecoalex:

      Indeed! But tread carefully, the concept of "regulatory capture" is well beyond the grasp of a majority of the members of this community, most of whom are intellectually enfeebled.

    • 8 months ago
  • PIANORAMA
  • Schnookums
    • 0
      Schnookums  

    • Thanks for posting Jan. ^'d

      What I'd like to know is how Ron Paul might respond to this. His claim that the EPA isn't necessary because the 'market' would regulate this kind of action seems to have failed as well. Here we have the EPA shitting all over themselves to breeze through chemicals that are detrimental to pollinators (which are infinitely more important than scraping higher yields out of overproduced corn fields), but the market doesn't appear to give a crap.

      So who's to protect me and the bees from a market that would value higher crop yields at any environmental, ecological, or health costs?

      Paul gets a lot of things right (especially criticisms of the debt-based, fractional reserve money system & drug and foreign policy), but so utterly fails in other areas that it's almost impossible to believe that he's really that naive. I'm happy to support ideas no matter where or who they come from, but how anyone could argue that regulators shouldn't be regulating (and stopping) these actions doesn't have any real respect for the subsequent generations that will inherit this earth.

    • 8 months ago
  • nowherefast
    • -2
      nowherefast  
    • Schnookums:

      You have heard of the concept of "federalism"? Powers are divided between the states and federal government.

      This may surprise you but every state in the union has an environmental agency with jurisdiction over environmental matters. So to be for the federal EPA is to be for redundancy, and consequentially waste, hardly an environmental sentiment.

    • 8 months ago
  • Schnookums
    • 0
      Schnookums  
    • nowherefast:

      Yes, and they are doing a fantastic job right? I'm more apt to believe it's the States that are redundantly overseeing environmental matters especially when one State could decide (in the federalism model) to not strictly enforce something that gets transported via the air or waterways and ends up in another State(s).

      I agree, let's reduce waste and redundancy, but let's also make sure we're attacking the right target. A nationwide, united, coordinated effort to protect the environment sounds a lot more comprehensive than 50 different models and enforcement protocols.

    • 8 months ago
  • nowherefast
    • 0
      nowherefast  
    • Schnookums:

      "one State could decide (in the federalism model) to not strictly enforce something that gets transported via the air or waterways and ends up in another State(s). "

      And that other state could sue the offending state or corporation for trespass, nuisance, negligence, violation of various common law surface water doctrines, get an injunction stopping the corporate or government from continuing to engage in the acts that cause the contamination and force them to pay the cost of cleanup as well.

    • 8 months ago
  • MSII
    • +2
      MSII  

    • Nothing new here, typical laissez-faire-america. Whoever's got the money makes what passes for the rules. All the companies "self-regulate". That was all so much of saint-reagan-the-mad's philosophy. Government regulators were all supposed to be corporations friends. It's not "politically correct" to say the wrong-wingers are literally insane but you know what, they are. Every single thing that makes up their insane ideology is quite literally insane. Their beliefs are self-contradicting, and non-rational. Given a chance they will destroy the country and more by just the weight of their mad policies.

    • 8 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • Leen61
  • GENERALNATTY
  • Anonmaly
    • +1
      Anonmaly  

    • I don't know whether it's location or what, but I consider myself pretty lucky... Just this morning I was out walking around my yard (rural), and could here the hum of bees gathering pollen from even the smallest little weeds that need mowed...

      Every year without fail, every morning from early spring to late fall, if there is a source of pollen, they are there, and appear healthy... I feed the crap out of them with a garden of flowers and food too though, so they know to come back...

      Fairly substantial scaled farming (100 acres or so within a few mile radius) goes on real near to me as well. I've worried about the potential of pesticides or GMO's messing with them, but they never seem to have bothered them. Of course it doesn't seem like the real regimented Monsanto style farming going on close by either.

      Idk, I think it just may be location, but I could count hundreds of healthy bees a day, every day, and nobody I know of near by keeps them or anything... Though I have spotted the occasional "bee boxes" that have been leased to the nearest farmer...

      Not doubting the destruction caused by Monsanto or other sources, I just have hope because I personally see no problems with the local bee population...

      (this is not a paid pr stunt by Monsanto, I personally despise the Nazis and their attempts to monopolize the whole damn food supply.)

    • 8 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • David_Cervantes
  • jackshin
    • +2
      jackshin  
    • David_Cervantes:

      what makes this depressing is the farmer will complain you dam if you don't, you dam if you do, and not realize what they are trying to do is make a buck at the expense of others. If this bee farmer searched for the records, why couldn't the farmer, unless of course they are a corporate farmer?

    • 8 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +3
      JanforGore  
    • David_Cervantes:

      I surmised a few years ago that "Round Up Ready" crops could be part of CCD because of the pollination process, as did some reports. Of course, those who stated that were more than likely gagged or intimidated which is the usual treatment regarding getting out truth in this country. People are saying that Goldman Sachs rules the world? Well, there are others sharing that role and Monsanto, Bayer, Dupont, Dow, etc. are prime among them as they slink in the shadows behind the EPA, the FDA and the USDA that have covered for them all of these years while their products have poisoned this world and us.

    • 8 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • David_Cervantes
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