Owen Patterson Buries His Head In The Sand Again

Posted by: Blueknowz on 05 April 2013

This morning, an important parliamentary committee said the pesticides that are being blamed for killing our bees should stop being used. [1] They agree with scientists and other governments across Europe that these pesticides are a danger to bees.

But Owen Paterson, the environment minister, is refusing to listen to the mounting scientific evidence. In just a few weeks he will vote on whether these pesticides should be taken out of use across Europe. Last time he refused to vote in favour. This time let’s make sure he votes to protects our bees.

The petition to protect our bees is growing fast, more than 100,000 of us, including you, have now signed it. If we can grow the petition even larger, we can send a message that he’s not only going against science, but he’s going against public opinion too.

Please can you forward this email to your friends and ask them to sign the petition too? They can sign the petition here:http://www.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns

 

Posted on: 05 April 2013 by Mike-B

I've signed up simply because we know these neonicotinoid based pesticides are harmful, we might not know how & why they are harmful yet enough to satisfy Mr Paterson, but that we know they are harmful & they do affect bee populations is enough for me to at least agree we should be putting a temporary halt on their use.  

But I do have a real concern about the alternatives available to replace neonicotinoids. What data do we have that indicates alternatives are safer & will not bring other as yet unknown damaging issues.  


Dare I suggest GM might be a better way to reduce or even remove the need for most of these harmful pesticides. 

Posted on: 05 April 2013 by Jasonf
Done, in full agreement.

Can't agree on GM, I am not an expert but 'more harm than good' comes to mind from my limited reading on the topic...although we don't know for sure.

Jason
Posted on: 05 April 2013 by Steebo

Signed!...No surprise that major pesticide companies are also big donors to conservative political parties around the world. 

Posted on: 05 April 2013 by XJR1300 SP

Done it how dare he does the moron not understand the work bees do for us what a $£$%^&&&

So angry

Posted on: 06 April 2013 by Mike-B
Originally Posted by Jasonf:
Can't agree on GM, I am not an expert but 'more harm than good' comes to mind from my limited reading on the topic...although we don't know for sure.

 

I agree it was hard to support GM & the direction it was taking back in the early days.  Modern GM is a whole other new game & much of it is based on stimulating plants natural selection processes & in some respects it really is not much different from developing new strains of crops.   

If you get into it in depth its hard to sustain the absolute rejection that so many objectors have. We have new strains of wheat in Africa that grow to half the height of modern crops & do not require high N fertilizers, they are very much more drought tolerant in the critical green growing phase & are tolerant to most fungus attack so do not require anti-fungal sprays.  They are GM but in truth is just reconstruction of a wheat that was naturally breed out of existence some 100 years ago. It enables local farmers to successfully grow & harvest wheat without high-tech mechanization & expensive chemical treatments throughout its life.     

Posted on: 06 April 2013 by Phil Cork
Originally Posted by XJR1300 SP:

Done it how dare he does the moron not understand the work bees do for us what a $£$%^&&&

So angry

Mine do the shopping...