Bee-killing pesticides ban passed
BRUSSELS: EU countries voted yesterday for a near-total ban on insecticides blamed for killing off bee populations, in what campaigners called a “beacon of hope” for the winged insects.
Bees help pollinate 90% of the world’s major crops, but in recent years have been dying off from “colony collapse disorder”, a mysterious scourge blamed on mites, pesticides, virus, fungus, or a combination of these factors.
The 28 European Union (EU) member states approved a ban on three neonicotinoid pesticides after the European food safety agency said in February that must uses of the chemicals posed a risk to both honey bees and wild bees.
Campaigners dressed in black and yellow bee suits rallied outside the headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels ahead of the vote for a ban on three key pesticide chemicals.
EU Environment Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis said he was “happy that member states voted in favour of our proposal” to restrict the chemicals and tweeted a picture of the activists.
The pesticides — clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam — are based on the chemical structure of nicotine and attack the nervous systems of insect pests.
Environmental groups, which have long campaigned for a ban on neonicotinoids, were abuzz about the decision.
“Finally, our governments are listening to their citizens, the scientific evidence and farmers who know that bees can’t live with these chemicals and we can’t live without,” Avaaz senior campaigner Antonia Staats said.