Syngenta AG said there aren’t grounds for restricting the use of its Cruiser insecticide after European Commissioner for Health Tonio Borg called for laws which may control the product and sprays from Bayer AG. The Swiss maker of crop chemicals said any constraint on Cruiser, a neonicotinoid pesticide which protects crops from corn to cotton against insects such as beetles and centipedes, would cause significant loss to farmers and the economy, without helping bees. “We believe that a large number of European Member States agree and will make clear their positions in the coming weeks,” Syngenta spokesman Paul Barrett said in an e-mailed statement. Bee populations “are primarily under threat from disease and poor nutrition,” he said, challenging the findings of a European Food Safety Authority report, which said Cruiser threatens bee health. Borg will propose EU-wide legislative measures Jan. 31 on neonicotinoids, which kill bugs by attacking the central nervous system, he told EU ministers in a meeting yesterday. He said the measures would be “inspired by the precautionary principle,” although a total ban would not be justified. Borg’s comments are a blow to Basel-based Syngenta which won sales exceeding $1 billion for Cruiser in 2011, or 7.5 percent of revenue. The crop chemicals-maker is due to report full-year results on Feb. 6.
Source: Bloomberg Business Week, January 29, 2013
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-01-29/syngenta-dismisses-eu-call-…
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Syngenta ignores compelling evidence
In July 2010 I published a ground-breaking discovery on the toxicity of neonicotinoids to arthropods in the journal Toxicology (attached). My paper convincingly demonstrated that the risk of chronic exposure of arthropods (including bees) to a relatively new class of pesticides, called neonicotinoids, which are mainly produced by Bayer CropScience and Syngenta, had been severely underestimated. I have presented my findings at the annual meeting of the Swiss Toxicology Society on 22 November 2012, which was attended by Syngenta employees (lecture attached). Would Syngenta care to comment on my findings or will the thiamethoxam producer continue to ignore compelling evidence implicating neonicotinoids in insect decline ?
Graham White comments
Just in case anyone does not fully understand what we are up against in the UK in terms of bees and the neonicotinoids 'lobby', please see attached article by Dr Peter Campbell. Syngenta's main scientific apologist lobbyist for the continued use of neonics. Dr. Peter Campbell was the UK Govt Regulator Agency scientist, working for what used to be called the "Chemical Regulations Directorate" (CRD), which supposedly monitored and regulated Bayer, Syngenta and BASF etc in the UK. Sometime around 2000 he jumped ship and left the CRD to join Syngenta as their Head of Science and once he was established many of the other staff of CRD eventually left the government service to join him at Syngenta. When the Bee Crisis was really hitting home, around 2010 the UK govt announced it was providing $15 million to 'solve the mystery' and this money was to be given out in grants to university researchers who submitted interesting applications. At the same time, Syngenta announced it was giving $1.5 million to the same 'Bee Research Fund' - and in return for providing that money, Peter Campbell was given a prominent role on the funding committee that handed out the grants, along with Dr Jeff Pettis from USDA - even though this was British research carried out in the UK. Needless to say, despite that fact that neonicotinoids were the number one suspect in the global bee pandemic, not one penny of the $17 million went to any research project looking at neonicotinoids. Many observers conclude that Campbell's specific role on the funding cttee was to ensure that no funds were allocated to ANY project that wanted to research the impact of neonics on bee deaths in the UK. Whether that was his role or not, not a penny went to research neonics. His article atached gives a deep insight into the mindset of the pesticide manufacturers and their 'pestitute' researchers in the universities