Sign the petition!Neonicotinoid, known as “neonics” for short, is a farm pesticide produced primarily by the German chemical giant Bayer, widely used in the U.S. to coat a massive 142 million acres of corn, wheat, soy and cotton seeds. They are also common ingredients in many home gardening products. However, three new studies* link neonics to declining bee populations nationwide - fully a third of commercial beehives, over a million colonies, have disappeared over the past year. The pesticide works as a nerve poison, infecting their insect victims and interfering with their homing ability, which in turn prevents them from making it back to their hives.
Germany and France have already banned pesticides known to cause the death of bees and there is still time to save bees in this country if you follow suit. We urge the EPA to protect nature’s hardest workers; please ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides from being used on crops and in household products.
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/03/bayer-pesticide-bees-studies
Healthy bee populations are essential to the production of our food. Bees are attracted to floral nectars and help pollinate the plant, allowing it to reproduce. Therefore, without honey bees, our lives would be impoverished by a general lack of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and other bee-pollinated plant products like corn, apples, oranges, lemons, broccoli, onions, blueberries, cherries, avocados, and many more.
Unfortunately, our widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides is causing a dramatic decline in honey bee populations. The USDA projects that this year's corn crop will cover 94 million acres, all of which will be planted with seeds treated with neonicotinoid pesticides. In small doeses these pesticides damage the bees' immune systems and homing abilities; in large doses the pesticides are lethal.
Sign the petition to put pressure on Lisa Jackson at the EPA to ban the use of these pesticides in order to protect the long-term health of our food system!
Click to find out more about or nation's bee populations and the imminent threat posed by neonicotinoid pesticides:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/53420300/AtlasoftheHoneybee.pdf
http://www.soilassociation.org/wildlife/bees/householdpesticides
http://www.pan-uk.org/home-garden/list-of-home-and-garden-pesticides-containing-neonicotinoids
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/29/10921493-neonicotinoid-pesticides-tied-to-crashing-bee-populations-2-studies-find?lite 