> <Just stop and think how much it is costing them to pay
> Jerry Hayes to work for them. > Well, if all it takes to
> become a credible and major bee friendly company is
> to pay someone a lot of money I don't understand why
> it wasn't done earlier instead of paying millions of
> dollars to get people lobbying for them.
> The word "gullible" springs to mind.
I'm going to step in and defend Jerry Hayes here, as he has consistently
demonstrated unimpeachable ethics and standards to me in first-hand
interactions for several decades. He is very open about his post with
Bee-Logics, and he has made it very clear that the first thing he told
Monsanto was the obvious - that IAPV ("Ian [Lipkin]'s Annoying Pet Virus!")
was not a significant problem for beekeeping, and was not worthy of an
anti-viral as compared to Deformed Wing, Acute Paralysis, and all the other
viruses that do tangible harm to our bees.
Stop and think about that for a moment - Jerry was hired, and promptly
walked in and told senior management that the company they just bought, the
company they hired him to work for, had... SURPRISE - no viable product to
sell! He implied that they needed to invest yet more money in more R&D and
patiently wait an unknown period of time for something that might be worth
selling. There are several ways that this might have cost Jerry his job
right then and there. The audacity was breathtaking. So was the brutal
honesty.
The work that Bee-Logics is doing has not been changed at all by Monsanto's
purchase.
So, say what you like about whatever multinational it is fashionable to
condemn at the moment, but those of us who know Jerry Hayes would object
strongly to even the most tangential implication that he is acting as any
sort of apologist.
If he was hired as an apologist, he won't keep the job long. Jerry came to
NYC in May at my invitation and spoke to a full house at the fabulous NYC
Parks Dept HQ overlooking Central Park. He was treated to two different
angry speeches from self-appointed activists during the Q&A period, and he
made no attempt to justify, rationalize, or defend Monsanto even though he
was addressed in shrill voices. He just stood there and took a pummeling
from people who did not even have a grasp of the most basic facts.
I had to step in and respond to the second harangue, as it was very
emotional, and point out that the famous "farmer lawsuits" in Canada and the
USA were not cases of mere seed saving and re-planting. I addressed this
general misconception recently in this forum, here:
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-lsoftdonations.exe?A2=BEE-L;9f0070a.13
05
or
http://tinyurl.com/k35nt6a
So, the only "gullible" people are the ones who would believe any
disparagement of Jerry's character.
The paycheck of any employee is a tiny number to a multinational, and there
are many people in beekeeping that would have made far better apologists,
spokesmodels, or stooges than Jerry if that is what Monsanto wanted.
Let's just be happy that Jerry can have some influence at Bee-Logics, and
hope that anti-virals work, and are possible to mass-produce and deploy
without Japanese monster-movie side effects. In contrast, let's remember
what a disaster the idea of "alternating between Apistan and Checkmite"
turned out to be, and that this advice came from the best and brightest of
beekeeping science, spread among both Federal and University labs.
Let's also remember that raising money to oppose new agricultural technology
is a very profitable undertaking for the architects of the shrill voices and
those who deliberately misinform the good-hearted people who feel so
strongly about what they do not understand, fear, and then hate because they
fear.
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