Everyone wants to protect profits.  This includes not only pesticide
companies, but also farmers, beekeepers, and some activist groups.

As a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist, I support and applaud many
initiatives of environmental activist groups.  What I object to, however,
is when those groups attempt to generate unreasonable fear in the public in
order to support fundraising efforts.  Yes, there are many volunteers
involved in the environmental movement (myself included), but there are
also many paid staff who have a vested interest in keeping the donations
coming.

For example, FOE UK has a staff of 28, who take home a combined salary of
about a million pounds (approx $1.6 million) a year.  That's about 60% of
the chapter's total donations and legacies (
https://www.foe.co.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/friends-earth-limited-annual-accounts-2012-2013-22036.pdf).


The FOE UK accounting report was the first one that came up in a simple web
search; I do not know whether it is typical for most chapters.  However,
one can see that the paid staff clearly have a vested interest in
fundraising.  And a well-spun document such as this certainly helps with
that fundraising.

I see little difference between the spin in documents by Bayer or Syngenta
(although they tend to document their facts better) and those of some
environmental groups.  This bothers me.  Being an environmentalist myself,
I feel that we environmentalists should hold ourselves to a higher standard
than the PR firms of multinational companies.  I expect those firms to spin
the facts.  I'm dismayed when environmental groups do the same unprincipled
thing.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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