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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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From:
Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:36:36 -0500
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> This report refers to Neonicotinoids as "...one of the most advanced and targeted forms of crop protection." Poisoning an entire crop and the soil besides is more analogues to a nuclear strike in my books. 

From what I read, some people seem genuinely surprised that anyone would think of making a plant poisonous. Fact is of course, nature has produced a plethora of poisonous plants. Sorry to say but God did not put plants on the Earth for us to eat. Before the domestication of plants, it was real slim pickins' 

I grew up in San Diego and we studied the natives in elementary school. We learned they lived off of acorns. Not fat acorns like in the East but small, hard acorns produced by scrub oaks in the arid climate. They ground them on stones (and ate a lot of powdered rock with them). They supplemented this with bitter berries and occasionally shellfish -- but alas, mussels produce toxins at certain times of the year. And they didn't have calendars. 

By domesticating plants we obtained fat, juicy, nutritious food which is understandably attractive to pests. Hordes of them, in fact. Plagues of grasshoppers, weevils, meal worms, plant viruses, leaf blight. Flocks of birds, deer, wild pigs, everyone and his brother is attracted to vast acreages of ripe food, trying to eat it before we do.

Crop protection involves the attempt to kill pests. Why not? They don't care if you live or die! Some of the earliest plant protection products were derived from plants, like nicotine. You could spray a crop with a poison to protect it, and then the poison got washed off by rain. Trouble is, a lot of these early pesticides, like arsenic, accumulated around the plants, and were taken up by them, so folks ended up eating food with arsenic in it.

In the twentieth century scientists got a lot better at devising products that *target* pests and cause minimal collateral damage. Often the consequences are unforeseen, and the product causes very bad side effects. These products must then be withdrawn and replaced by others. That's how we got to neonicotinoids. They are poisons used to kill plant pests so we have food to eat. They have side effects, like any other pest control measures. 

The question is: are they better or worse than the alternatives? There are many older products that are far more dangerous. There is also the alternative of not using pesticides and losing your crops. There are many folks who think the world would be better off without pesticides, without drugs, without guns. It's true of course, but these are the tools we use to protect ourselves. They also cause endless harm to innocents. This is the world we have. 

PLB

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