The Harvard study marks a new low (or high) depending on how you score
inaccuracy, poor execution, lack of knowledge. First paper that we've seen,
where the press release AND the paper were distributed months before
publication. That's usually a violation of journal policy.
Randy hit most of the weaknesses, including the fact that they did not
induce CCD, even at huge dose. They did apparently kill some bees - no
surprise there.
Two points that have not been brought up:
1) If any pesticide were to commonly show up in high concentrations in
high fructose corn syrup, that should have triggered an immediate
investigation by FDA, since we (humans) also consume HFCS, and many people are exposed
to lots of it in processed foods. I don't remember any alarms about the
dangers of people ingesting high levels of pesticides from HFCS. Lots of
discussion about its nutritional value to people, to bees though; and whether
its sugar.
2) Show me the corn plant that produces HFCS, or the bee that harvests
HFCS from corn. It certainly doesn't come from gutation droplets or pollen.
As per the difficulty in analyzing HFCS, its doable, just takes extra prep
steps, costs more. I'd like to see some numbers from the guy who claims
to have found imidacloprid in HFCS, but then says its hard to analyze. Lots
of flag waving, no numbers from him that I've found. Has anyone else
actually seen some real data from him?
As someone else on this list mentioned, HFCS can be diluted before
analysis. Since HFCS is made from kernels of corn (not droplets, not pollen), one
could also extract the corn kernels. That would avoid the 'sticky'
material problem.
Everyone on this list knows that HFCS can be toxic to bees due to the
formation of HMF in the syrup during manufacture or storage. That was an issue
that we and several other investigators looked at when CCD was first
reported.
Worst case we found, a beekeeper used metal storage tanks, heated his
syrup to make it flow better on cold days - perfect conditions for formation
of lots of HMF. There also reportedly was some bad syrup distributed in CA.
And, we found a few beekeepers adding good syrup to leftover syrup from
the year before.
In summary, a few cases of bad syrup (from HMF) were found - but they
didn't com close in numbers of cases to explaining all of the CCD cases.
Jerry
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