----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Fischer" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, January 09, 2010 11:39 AM
Subject: [BEE-L] Spirotetramat


>>There is much misleading information being circulated about spirotetramat 
>>and the recent court decision directing EPA to vacate current US 
>>registrations and repeat several steps of the registration process.  NRDC 
>>is claiming the decision is a "win" for bees and implying the judge's 
>>ruling was about the safety of the product.  It is not a win for bees or 
>>beekeepers.  And the judges ruling was only about a bureaucratic 
>>procedural error made by EPA.

You are right in that the judge's decision was only on the sloppy procedures 
of the EPA in approving it.

I hope you are right in pronoucing the material "safe for honeybees."  If it 
truly is, the delay will be only a minor blip in the completion of the 
process.

At the EPA website: http://www.epa.gov/opprd001/factsheets/spirotetramat.pdf 
(page 44) it is crystal clear that the testing was not adequate, and that 
further tests would have to be done. Why should bees and beekeepers be 
guinea pigs until the facts are established?

The point I want to emphasize is that the approval process was sloppy 
because EPA doesn't place much priority on bees. This sloppiness is 
characteristic of all the bee protection enforcement by both federal and 
most state pesticide cops. Every beekeeper knows how hard it is to get 
enforcement of label directions.

Many beekeepers have experienced first hand the frustration of trying to 
deal with violations that caused bee kills, knowing that no amount of 
after-the-fact enforcement will ever compensate for the losses.

It is my hope that the court precedent will encourage the pesticide cops to 
put a higher priority on bees - and to do some genuine *preventive* 
enforcement.

So far, we have been unable to get it across to the farmers, the pesticide 
industry, and the pesticide cops, the reality that actions that destroy bees 
and put their keepers out of business are equivalent to "biting the hand 
that feeds you."

Dave Green
Retired beekeeper 

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