Well, you can’t accuse the Environmental Protection Agency of making a snap decision.
The EPA announced that a recommendation on the use of neonics won’t come until at least 2016 — and maybe 2017. That’s the good news, I suppose. The earlier project was 2018.
Jim Jones, the agency’s head of its chemical safety and pollution prevention division, made this announcement recently by saying:
“We are frustrated with the pace. But at the end of the day we need to recognize the science.”
That “at the end of the day” stuff must be Washingtonese for “at the end of the decade.” That’s the kind of cliché that bureaucrats in D.C. like to use when they want to sound smart. For those of us out here in the hinterlands, it’s meaningless and pretty lame.
The EPA has been studying the effects of neonicotinoids on bees and other pollinators for seven years. Yet, we haven’t reached “the end of the day” just yet.
Would that the EPA had taken this much time to study neonicotinoids BEFORE it approved their use. There would probably be a lot more bees alive today.
Read more about this here: http://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2014/10/22/stories/1060007741
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Key words: neonicotinoids, honeybees, bees, pollinators, pesticides, chemical safety, pollution, Jim Jones, Environmental Protection Agency, neonics, at the end of the day, bureaucrats, EPA
Blount County Beekeepers Association 