by Russel Norman
An interesting story in Spiegel Online suggesting that the collapse on bee numbers being experienced in the US and to some extent in Germany is due to GE crops weakening the bees and making them more vulnerable to infection.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Russel Norman on Tue, March 27th, 2007
Tags: environment
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Not that I’m casting doubt on Der Spiegel’s science team, but here’s the same story reported by New Scientist:
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19325964.500-where-have-all-the-bees-gone.html
The article seems to be of the opinion that it’s too early to declare the culprit. Mankind may well have a hand (and all too frequently does, inadvertently) but it could be too early to blame GE crops in particular.
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And historically (recent history..?), the GEFreeNZ campaigners used a monarch butterfly as a symbol of the GE free movement, because the invertebrates which feed on the wildflowers of the fields would be the first casualties when GMO crops are monocultured and sprayed with Roundup repetitively.
Bees, butterflies and birds are no respectors of field boundaries, either, and would transmit GM traits from one crop area to another, whatever the edging policing of the fields concerned. Small vertebrates such as rats and mice have been shown to have toxicity effects from ingesting Bt corn. No wonder that invertebrates are becoming less robust populations around GE crops.
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ummm, if its a GMO doesnt that mean they dont need to use roundup? The plant is resistant anyway.
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Blue the “roundup ready” GMO’s are so that farmers can use roundup over the entire paddock without having to apply it directly to only the weeds and have the GM plants be unaffected by it. Kinda lazy if you ask me, but cunning on the part of the roundup makers if farmers are using more spray over a wider area.
Another thought I had is that these GMO producers have no reason to care diddly-squat about bees because they are using terminator technology in their engineering and as such do not actually want their seeds to be fertile, so the ability to be pollinated is a moot point to them – and might actually serve their interests.
I dunno about you, but in my mind this terminator technology is a total abomination of the universal life force, being that one of the most primal features of all life on this planet is the ability for an organism to reproduce itself. Yeh OK, you can use mules as an example to dispute that, but I think you get my drift.
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“it may be too early to conclude” anything that the GM industry doesn’t like… It always will be!
There is indeed a huge difference between having strong suspicions about the effects of GMOs, and proving it… This is precisely why GMOs should be confined in the lab until we understand a great deal more about them!
That is called the precautionary principle. And it seems to be coming home to roost.
There is an excellent Wikipedia article on the phenomenon, known as Colony Collapse Disorder.
It does indeed seem to strike in countries which cultivate GMOs and not elsewhere.
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Zan, no, there are no “terminator” GMOs in widespread cultivation… yet. GM crops need bees as much as any other.
But ALL agriculture, including organic, will of course suffer hugely from the absence of bees. And not only agriculture, but all sorts of plant life.
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Alistair
The precautionary principle can is invoked before the case is proved beyond reasonable doubt, but in this case it could be premature.
Don’t get me wrong: GMOs could well be the culprit, but I don’t think there’s a reason to finger them above the other possibilities. If the real culprit was (for example) excessive use of Roundup, it wouldn’t be good a good look for the precautionary principle to grab the wrong suspect.
And if the proof bar is set too low, the precautionary principle could be used against technologies that we genuinely need. (insert technology you favour here: hybrid cars/windmills/PV cells..)
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Nah you’re COMPLETELY missing the point of the precautionary principle, Baz.
The principle is “We don’t know how this stuff works, there could be all sorts of unintended consequences, we need rigourous, peer-reviewed, long-term testing before concluding that it’s safe for agriculture”. There should also be a cost-benefit analysis : the benefits (not just for the company pushing the new organism, but for the wider community, should be substantial, before it should be envisaged to run an UNKNOWN risk.
It’s quite simple : that’s how they go about approving new medication. It’s incomparably more rigourous than the standards applied to releasing GMOs, and still they get it wrong sometimes.
Whereas Monsanto and Co do inadequate testing, then routinely misrepresent or falsify their test results to get approval for release. Can’t be trusted. (this is not even an example of the precautionary principle : here is a KNOWN health risk which they obfuscated.)
The thing is, monkeying with genes is done in a very rough and approximative manner. Genetics is complicated, and all sorts of unintended consequences can ensue. The companies concentrate on the result they want, and are not interested in the side-effects.
By contrast, hybrid cars, windmills, PV cells are a matter of simple engineering. There are no “unknown unknowns”. Not comparable in the slightest.
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Alistair
That’s not a good definition of the PP — it’s not there to prove that something is safe before it can be used, it’s invoked if something is strongly suspected of having serious and/or irreversible consequences (I refer the reader to “The Precautionary Principle in the 20th Century: Late Lessons from Early Warnings”). In this case, I don’t think there’s a reason (yet) to single out GMOs, and more research needs to be done urgently. This is in contrast to the Bush approach of saying that more research is needed, then cutting the research budget.
There are unknowns with all new technologies — for example, windfarm protestors have cited concerns about infrasound and bird safety. There are also disposal issues with hybrid batteries and compact flouro bulbs that need to be addressed. These are just the known unknowns: by definition we can’t say that there are no unknown unknowns.
If GMOs are found to be responsible for a collapse in bee populations, governments might get the backbone to stand up to the likes of Monsanto, and implement testing regimes like you suggest. But given the negative effect it’s likely to have on public perception of genetic modification, I don’t see why NZ would want to have anything to do with GMOs.
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