Folks, here's a comment from Jeff Anderson, who filed the lawsuit:

Randy
I trust that you will forward these thoughts to the list serve...
First, it seems that Charlie doesn't understand US pesticide law, here in
the US only pesticides registered as Restricted Use require an applicators
license and /or a record of the application. The classification of
Restricted Use Pesticide, is based on toxicity to human, neo-nics are
currently considered practically non-toxic to humans, so they are
classified "General Use". (California is the only state which in some cases
require licensing for General Use Pesticides). So, worry that all farmers
that would like to use coated seeds would have to become applicators is not
reality.

"Forcing EPA to do our bidding", This is NOT what the suit is about, what
it is about is EPA's lack of regulation amounts to Bureaucratic Anarchy of
their own rules, the suit simply is trying to pull EPA out of their
non-regulating ditch.

If this pesticide 'use' does not cause "unreasonable adverse effects on the
environment" (FIFRA) all that is needed to continue life as usual, give the
use a registration and an appropriate label; if however, the 'use' is
causing 'unreasonable adverse effects', perhaps some restrictions are in
order.
Common Law is clear, 'you may not use your property in a way that damages
the property of others'.  The 2005 MN Supreme court decision Anderson vs MN
DNR applied that concept to honeybees.

I also read that some feel that honeybees are trespassers. In order for
their to be trespass, there has to be 'entry without permission'. Trespass
has to do with knowledge, the 'entering party'  'knowns', or 'reasonably
should have known' to stay out. Wildlife (in our case, honeybees) are NOT
trespassers. This is precisely why bee toxic pesticides have mandatory
labeling in the environmental hazards portion of the label that says (with
variations) "Do not apply or allow residues on blooming crops or weeds if
bees are visiting the treatment area'. Note, the violation of this
statement is the application of the pesticide. Legal evidence of a label
violation is the presence of the pesticide or its residues on
the foliage. Pesticide regulators have convinced naive beekeepers that dead
bees at a hives entrance is 'the' label violation, dead bees are NOT the
violation, only secondary evidence that a violation has taken place, the
primary evidence is contaminated foliage.

Now that all may seem like a ditch, but it is precisely why coated seeds
should be registered and labeled. As it currently stands, EPA's
2013 Addendum to the FIFRA Inspection Manual clearly states that planting
of coated seeds is not considered a pesticide application. AAPCO (US
Pesticide Cops) only consider something an "incident" if a label has been
violated. As it stands even if a state 'investigates' a bee mortality event
tied to coated seed 'drift' (dust off, translocation to pollen or nectar,
contamination of area water, or whatever) no label has been violated, so it
will never be considered "an incident". As such, it is not reported or
reportable to EPA, for this reason their EIIS database is void of reports,
and EPA can claim that there are no unreasonable adverse effects, hence no
need to re-consider registration. The primary goal of the suit was to close
this huge loophole.

The other thing I saw in the B List conversation which is being
misunderstood, this suit is only to get EPA to properly regulate pesticide
coated seeds, it can not nor ever will assist in the recoup of damages.
Even if the court had decided in favor of we beekeepers, farmers, PSC, and
other NGO's, the only outcome would have been an order for EPA to properly
regulate. Recovery of losses is a very different civil suit in no way
connected to the outcome of this action.

The most disturbing point of the court decision is that as long as EPA
never makes a "final ruling", they now have legal precedent ('cover') for
'application' of any poison to any  "treated article". This has very broad
implications in our environment. Today a narrow band of pesticides, tomorrow,
RNAi's, nano's, or things yet to be conceived. As long as you can use a
treated article as the 'delivery device', the sky is the limit...

My extremely concerned opinion, and babble for the day... Jeff

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

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