More: The United Kingdom's environment minister went to considerable length to stop a ban on the killer pesticide neonicotinoids by circulating a letter among the 27 EU member states prior to the vote saying there was not yet enough evidence to justify a ban. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says the pesticides should be banned because they are widely linked to decline in bees around the world. A RSPB representative said the society has been reviewing the scientific evidence for a long time; the scientific community is reaching a consensus on their adverse impact. Nevertheless the UK's ministry for the environment, DEFRA, has refused to consider either a suspension or a ban citing "no unequivocal evidence". The bad attitude is typical of government agencies captured by big corporations they regulate. One third of UK cropland is sprayed with the neonicotinoid class of systemic chemicals. The European Food Safety Agency announced that neonicotinoids "pose a number of disturbing risks to bee health", but the Swiss company Syngenta that manufactures thiamethoxam told the EU Commission their report was "fundamentally flawed". US Person thinks if left to DEFRA, the only unequivocal evidence will occur when all the bees in Britain are dead. Fortunately, the EU Health Commissioner said he wanted the ban issue to be revisited and still thinks the EU will have measures in place by July 1st.
{19.03.13}Neonicotinoids can continue to kill bees since a ban failed to past the European Union committee of experts. The United Kingdom abstained along with Germany, Bulgaria, Estonia and Finland making the final vote 13-9 with five abstentions. The votes are weighed by population in each country so a majority was not obtained in favor of the ban. In the face of a deadlock the European Commission could act on its own to impose a ban on the three most common neonicotinoids-- imidacloprid and clothianidin made by Bayer and thiamethoxam made by Syngenta. More than thirty different scientific studies have found adverse effects on bees from the systemic chemicals. Neonicotinoids attack the bees nervous system and has been implicated by a Harvard University study as a cause of sudden colony collapse disorder. The European Food Safety Authority said in January the pesticides pose a high risk to bee health. Britain's Environment Secretary said he wanted await the result of his own government's test on the effects of neonicotinoids. France, who supported the ban proposal along with Italy and Slovenia, has already banned the use of the pesticides. Bayer's imidacloprid was its top-selling insecticide in 2009 earning $770 million.