Tell Lisa Jackson to Ban Bee Killing Pesticide

Beyond Pesticides, along with commercial beekeepers, and environmental organizations, filed an emergency legal petition March 20 with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to suspend the use of a pesticide that is linked to honey bee deaths, urging the agency to adopt safeguards. The legal petition, which specifies the pesticide clothianidin, is supported by over one million citizen petition signatures, targets the pesticide for its harmful impacts on honey bees.

Take Action. Tell EPA to suspend the bee killing pesticide by sending a letter to Administrator Lisa Jackson below:

Subject:

Your Letter:

Dear Administrator Jackson:

I am writing in support of the petition submitted by Jeff Anderson, et al. on March 20, 2012 seeking a suspension of the pesticide clothianidin. This chemical is highly toxic to honey bees, a key species for thriving ecosystems and an essential source of economic livelihood for farmers through pollination. The Agency has neglected its own requirements for conditionally registering clothianidin and it must take immediate action to ensure that this chemical does no further harm to honey bees.

I am aware that EPA is currently reviewing neonicotinoids, including clothianidin, in a process that is expected to last through 2018. However, with one-third of our bees dying off each year, this timeline is nowhere near fast enough. Clothianidin is a pesticide that the Agency knows to be highly toxic to bees, but has remained on the market since first being conditionally registered in 2003, despite the lack of a single scientifically valid field study showing that it can be used in a way that does not harm bees and other pollinators. By not requiring the registrant, Bayer, to satisfy the legal requirements of registration, the Agency is failing to follow its own rules.

As you know, EPA is supposed to register pesticides only if they meet standards for protection of environment and human health, but the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act allows EPA to waive these requirements and grant a conditional registration when health and safety data are lacking in the case of a new pesticide, allowing companies to sell the pesticide before EPA gets safety data. The company is supposed to submit valid data by the end of the conditional registration period. In the case of clothianidin, Bayer never did so.

Independent, peer-reviewed science shows that clothianidin –alone and in combination with pathogens and other pesticides– is likely a driving factor in recent pollinator declines. In the last few years, a substantial body of evidence has accumulated in the peer-reviewed scientific literature confirming that the use of clothianidin as a seed treatment, on corn in particular, presents substantial risks to honey bees flying over freshly sown fields, and foraging on the pollen of corn or of nearby plants that may have been dusted with, or have systemically taken up, this long-lasting pesticide. In the last year alone, three studies have confirmed that micro-doses of neonicotinoids act synergistically with pathogens such as Nosema to dramatically undermine immunity and increase mortality.

The Agency has failed in its duty to protect honeybees and other wildlife from this pesticide and has ignored the Agency’s own requirements concerning conditional registrations. I ask that you grant the requests in the petition by immediately suspending the use of clothianidin until its impacts on pollinators can be thoroughly evaluated and a solution can be found.

Lisa Jackson

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

As the public debate over causes behind Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) – a syndrome in which bees seemingly abandon their hives – carries on in the media, more and more new science has shown that neonicotinoid pesticides are indeed a critical piece of the puzzle. Neonicotinoids like clothianidin may not be the sole cause of CCD, but they are making our bees sick, and at least one of them is on the market illegally. While we may not know the exact cause of CCD, EPA knows enough to act, and has the authority and responsibility to suspend Bayer’s bee-toxic pesticide, clothianidin – yet for over a year the Agency has failed to do so.

For more information, please see Beyond Pesticides' Protecting Pollinators page.