Ban on bee-killing pesticides begins

France takes steps to lower risk of extinction

PARIS: A ban on five neonicotinoid pesticides enters into force in France tomorrow, placing the country at the forefront of a campaign against chemicals blamed for decimating critical populations of crop-pollinating bees.

The move has been hailed by beekeepers and environmental activists, but lamented by cereal and sugar beet farmers who claim there are no effective alternatives for protecting their valuable crops against insects.

With its ban, France has gone further than the European Union, which voted to outlaw the use of three neonicotinoids – clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam – in crop fields.

Heavily agriculture-reliant France banned these three neonicotinoids plus thiacloprid and acetamiprid, not only outdoors but in greenhouses too.

These are the only five neonicotinoid pesticides hitherto authorised for use in Europe.

Introduced in the mid-1990s, lab-synthesised neonicotinoids are based on the chemical structure of nicotine, and attack the central nervous system of insects.

They were meant to be a less harmful substitute to older pesticides, and are now the most widely-used to treat flowering crops, including fruit trees, beets, wheat, canola, and vineyards.

In recent years, bees started dying off from “colony collapse disorder”, a mysterious scourge blamed partly on pesticides along with mites, viruses, and fungi, or some combination of these.

Scientific studies have since shown that neonicotinoids harm bee reproduction and foraging by diminishing sperm quality and scrambling the insects’ memory and navigation functions.

Exposure also lowers their resistance to disease.

Some research has suggested that – like nicotine for humans – neonicotinoids hold an addictive attraction for bees, which shunned healthy food for pesticide-laced treats in lab tests.

The UN has warned that nearly half of insect pollinators, particularly bees and butterflies, risk global extinction.

This is particularly concerning in the context of a 2016 study which found that about 1.4 billion jobs and three-quarters of all crops depend on pollinators, mainly bees, which provide free plant fertilisation services worth billions of dollars.

Some French farmers are angry over the ban, however, and say there is not enough evidence that neonicotinoids are responsible for bee decline. — AFP