Keep the bees
The EU ban is supported by the EU Parliament and European Food Safety Authority, as well as the governments of France, Holland, Spain, Italy and Poland.
It is supported here by Buglife, Friends of the Bees, Pesticide Action Network, Friends of the Earth, the RSPB, the Scottish Wildlife Trust, the Soil Association and the Women’s Institute. More than 2.5 million people have signed the Avaaz petition.
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Hide AdTragically, the British Bee Keepers Association, the Scottish Beekeepers Association and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust have sided with Bayer and Syngenta, to defend these poisons. Orwell’s Ministry of Truth would award them medals for the finest examples of “double-think” since 1984 – “We love our bees, but we must save the pesticides that kill them!”
Members of these charities face a dilemma: do they join the fight to ban these deadly poisons, or continue to serve the interests of the pesticide companies, until every last honeybee, bumblebee, butterfly and bird is dead, or survives only in a glass cabinet?
These charities have lost all credibility as conservation bodies. Their policies suggest they have been co-opted or infiltrated by the pesticide lobbyists, gutted of their principles, and given a nice coat of “greenwash”, as camouflage for Syngenta, Bayer and the National Farmers’ Union.
Graham White
Friends of the Bees
Coldstream