In a piece for the Huffington Post today, I make the case that while green groups seek to ban newer and better pesticides because they allegedly harm bees, the groups ignore what scientists say could be the real culprits responsible for declining bee populations.

This doesn’t just raise questions about the activists’ real agenda, it answers them.

Bees pollinate a host of important crops, from fruits and nuts such as oranges, blueberries, apples and almonds, to row crops such cotton, canola, and soy. But the last few decades have been tough for bee populations, which have experienced larger than normal winter die-offs.

Some raise the specter of massive colony collapses spreading around the world. This even has its own acronym, CCD, which stands for Colony Collapse Disorder. While bee health is critically important, and there’s a real problem, those who suggest that the sky is falling and we’ll run out of food because of CCD have another agenda. And it has nothing to do with bees.

Radical environmental activist groups like the Sierra Club are using such fears to target a relatively new class of pesticide called neonicotinoids - or “neonics” for short - which they claim are responsible for CCD.

If the activists get their way, however, the complex and costly problem of disappearing bees will continue longer than necessary. Instead, activists should put their (hefty) resources into addressing the most likely causes identified by leading scientists.

As far as the bees, the greens, and their pesticide conspiracy goes, the evidence points more strongly to less obvious culprits. Although an unnecessary pesticide ban would cost farmers, as well as all of us who enjoy their bounty, scientists suggest it would leave the real bee killers on the loose longer.

The irony is that neonicotinoids were developed in part to replace older classes of pesticides that green groups vilified for being too toxic. Rather than being sprayed, the neonics are often used as a seed treatment — a coating on the seed — that can lower the amount of pesticide used by ten or twenty times or more.

That’s one reason the often risk-averse Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Agriculture (USDA) haven’t been eager to jump on the activists’ bandwagon and ban these innovative pesticides. The two agencies recognize the importance of bees to agriculture, and are taking the problem seriously.

Yet green groups, including Beyond Pesticides and the Pesticide Action Network (PAN), have filed suit against the EPA to ban neonicotinoids. (No, they haven’t called for a return to the older pesticides neonicotinoids more efficiently replaced.) One can’t keep from wondering whether bee protection is the primary mission of these activist groups. Or, perhaps, they are using bees (as well as their co-plaintiff beekeepers) as pawns in their anti-chemical campaign.

Protecting bees is more complicated than banning the latest agricultural chemical. So says the conclusion of a comprehensive report on bee health, jointly released this month by the USDA and the EPA. “The forces impacting honeybee health are complex,” said USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan. The report, a culmination of a National Stakeholders Conference on Honey Bee Health, conducted by federal researchers in conjunction with Pennsylvania State University scientists, sought to pull together the most up-to-date science on issues of bee health.The report cited many factors that could be contributing to declining bee health. By far, they found the biggest threat to bees is a parasitic mite appropriately named the varroa destructor.

Varroa mites — which have become endemic through much of the world - attach themselves to bees, sucking their blood and acting as a vector for deadly and crippling viruses. Traditionally, beekeepers have responded to these devastating infestations by dousing their hives with mite-killing — and highly toxic — pesticides, but the destructor mites are becoming increasingly resistant to the poisons, and the higher and higher doses of miticides being used are in themselves harmful to the bees.

If varroa were the only problem, it would be bad enough. But as the report notes, bee infections are proliferating. In fact, at least 34 different viruses, bacteria, fungi, mites, predators and other pathogens are currently affecting bee health.

Clearly, an ideological crusade against a class of decreased-toxicity pesticides isn’t going to help this situation — especially as real world experience has demonstrated that neonics aren’t a problem. Beekeepers in Western Canada, for instance, take their bees into the middle of the massive canola farms in that region — which are major users of neonics — because the canola helps make such great honey. How’s that for sweet irony?

Perhaps the most striking real-world proof is Australia, where bees are thriving and where beekeepers enjoy a profitable export business in the healthy bees they breed — even though neonics are widely used there. What Australia doesn’t have — and this is the key — is the varroa mite. While the parasite has spread almost everywhere else in the world, Australia’s strict import controls and inspections have so far kept their island continent free of infection.

In the meantime, scientists are proposing research where it could really do some good:

“Increasing the overall genetic diversity of honey bees will lead to healthier and hardier bees,” according to bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey of the University of California, Davis, and Washington State University.” And as is true of any living being, nutrition matters. It “has a major impact on individual bee and colony longevity,” according to the USDA, since “a nutrition-poor diet can make bees more susceptible to harm from disease and parasites.”

The final recommendations from the government report for improving bee health involve more information and better communication. Research into whether pesticides play a role in bee decline has been inconclusive. The report calls for a better understanding on real-world exposure to pesticides and the effect of those exposures on bee health. The report’s focus on “real-world exposure” is a not-so-subtle jab at activists who point to laboratory experiments where bees are harmed from being drenched in high levels of pesticides, unlike any levels they are exposed to in agriculture. Recent field studies, however which track real-world exposures of bees to pesticides fail to implicate neonics as an important factor in bee decines.

If the activists really wanted to solve the bee problem, instead of reflexively railing against pesticides, there are all sorts of things they could do which are based on the scientific recommendations.

For instance, the Sierra Club could organize a popular Run for The Bees, a 5k to support research to find a sustainable way to kill varroa mites, without killing the bees too.

And why stop there? If the Pesticide Action Network wanted to contribute to bee health, the science suggests their efforts would be more effective if they were to host a Bee a Good Eater initiative, which would educate beekeepers about proper bee nutrition. Perhaps they could lobby the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign to get involved. That would really create a buzz.

And finally, given the importance of bee genetic diversity, I encourage Beyond Pesticides to invite their members to host weekly “bee socials” in their backyards. Nature-loving activists could cheer as bees of varying backgrounds are brought together to do what (birds and) bees are known to do.

The humor of these approaches may sting, but the point remains: if green groups were truly concerned about bee health, they’d vigorously advocate for advances pointed to by the nation’s leading scientists in the field. None of that expertise calls for pesticides bans.

The green groups’ approach to bee health doesn’t just raise questions about their agenda, it answers them. So long as there’s political hay to be made, they’d just as soon let the bees keep on dying.

 

In a piece for the Hoover Institution’s journal, Defining Ideas, Dr. Henry I. Miller and I highlight yet another abuse of power in the Obama Administration.

As questions swirl around the IRS scandal, we expose the administration’s selective law enforcement.

Why is the Obama administration turning a blind eye to criminal activity?

 

The facts are straight forward,

In May of last year, the New York Times did something extraordinary: On the front page, the paper not only ran a photo of a Massachusetts woman in flagrante delicto committing multiple federal and state felonies and civil torts, but also identified her and the scene of the crime. You would think an ensuing investigation and prosecution would be a slam-dunk, but federal regulators and law enforcement officials have been nowhere to be found. 

 The crimes? This woman and other activists were defacing food labels to “warn” consumers about alleged dangers of genetically modified foods.

This is far from a harmless prank. Federal law prohibits “The alteration, mutilation, destruction, obliteration, or removal of the whole or any part of the labeling of, or the doing of any other act with respect to, a food, drug, device, or cosmetic, if such act is done while such article is held for sale (whether or not the first sale) after shipment in interstate commerce and results in such article being adulterated or misbranded.”

In plain English, homemade, ad hoc warning labels like those described in the Times’ expose make the products “misbranded,” and they can no longer be sold legally.

Placing your own “warning” label on a food product for sale constitutes several serious crimes in addition to the violation of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Vigilante labeling also violates state laws, including “criminal trespass”—an unlawful act causing injury to the person, property, or rights of another—as well as vandalism and criminal defacement. And because these actions are being promoted and perpetrated by a group (www.labelityourself.org), we can throw in criminal conspiracy charges as well.

There’s still more—there are, for instance, the violations of civil law, such as “trespass to chattels,” which is interference with another person’s lawful possession of personal property that has a prospective economic value. Finally, the manufacturer of the food could bring an action for “dilution” —weakening of its brand or trademark.

In case the Obama administration’s law enforcement officials didn’t read their New York Times the day the crimes were reported, we personally reported the criminal acts to the FBI’s Boston office (in the region where the transgressions took place), as well as to the FDA Commissioner and the head of the agency’s Center for Food Safety and Nutrition, who have jurisdiction over the federal violations.

We have not received even an acknowledgement, let alone substantive follow-up. We cannot help wondering whether the inaction reflects the Obama administration’s demonstrated anti-genetic engineering bias, its sympathy with food activists, or both. (The incident happened too long ago to blame the sequester.)

Why ignore prima facie evidence of federal crimes? There is reason to believe that politics is involved in this selective (non-)enforcement. Food activism is especially concentrated in blue states such as Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, and California. (The New York Times’ front-page story showed Cynthia LaPier of Great Barrington, Mass., slapping “Warning, May Contain GMO’s” labels on food products in a local market.)

The administration’s failure to enforce laws on the books is especially troublesome given that the issue of labeling genetically engineered foods is being deliberated by legislators and voters around the country. Just last year, California’s voters, who are hardly known for being conservative, rejected Proposition 37, the green movement’s model for mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods. The administration’s inaction sends a message that if you can’t win at the ballot box, it is okay to take matters into your own hands. It’s no surprise, then, that activists have been threatening to escalate their “guerilla-labeling” efforts.

Partisan political motives behind the failure of regulators and the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute the labeling vigilantes would not be an isolated example. Americans learned recently that the IRS discriminated against conservative groups while determining whether they were entitled to tax-exempt status; there is also the case of the EPA, which waived Freedom of Information request fees for “green” organizations, but not for conservative groups; and the Department of Justice overlooked flagrant intimidation of white voters by Black Panthers at the polls during the 2008 election.

The piece continues with a discussion about genetically modified foods,

Some background is necessary to understand the motivation for the vigilante labeling. There are widespread misapprehensions about the modern techniques of genetic engineering—also known as biotechnology, recombinant DNA technology, or genetic modification (GM)—which offer plant breeders the tools to make old crop plants do spectacular new things. These technologies increase crop yields and offer a variety of crop-specific benefits, including better nutrients, improved resistance to pests, drought-tolerance, and other characteristics that allow farmers to grow more with fewer inputs and less environmental impact. The practice is opposed mostly by progressives who embrace an idyllic view of a nature unspoiled by technology and tend to dislike corporate-driven innovation.

The scientific community has long recognized that the “new” techniques—now four decades old—are essentially an extension, or refinement, of earlier methods for genetic modification, and that gene transfer or modification by molecular techniques does not, per se, confer risk. In fact, because of the greater precision, agricultural scientists have more confidence about safety. After the cultivation of more than 3 billion acres of genetically engineered crops worldwide in some three dozen countries and the consumption in North America alone of more than three trillion servings of foods that contain ingredients from them, there has not been a single documented case of injury to a person or disruption of an ecosystem.

On the basis of both the scientific and regulatory precedents, the FDA decided in 1992 that food labels do not need to include information about the use of the newer genetic engineering techniques. Federal regulation requires that food labels be truthful and not misleading and prohibits label statements that are likely to be misunderstood by consumers even if they are strictly accurate. Following long-standing precedents in food regulation, the FDA requires special labeling only when a new food raises questions of safety, nutrition, or proper usage.

Instead of educating or serving a legitimate consumers’ “need to know” certain information, regulators believe that mandatory labels on genetically engineered food would imply a warning, or at least would likely be misconstrued by consumers as a suggestion that the product differs in some material way (such as safety or nutrition) even if it does not.

In the 1992 policy announcement, the FDA said that it would require foods—whatever technology was used to make them—to be reviewed by regulators and possibly labeled if they raise questions related to nutrition or safe use. Examples cited in the announcement include the presence of substances new to the food supply, allergens presented in an unusual or unexpected way (such as a peanut protein in wheat), or increased levels of toxins found normally in foods. 

In congressional testimony in 2003, the FDA Commissioner further explained the agency’s position:

FDA does not require labeling to indicate whether or not a food or food ingredient is a [genetically engineered] product, just as it does not require labeling to indicate which conventional breeding technique was used in developing a food plant. Rather, any significant differences in the food itself have to be disclosed in labeling. If genetic modifications materially change the composition of a food product, these changes must be reflected in the food’s labeling. This would include its nutritional content (for example, more oleic acid, or greater amino acid or lysine content) or requirements for storage, preparation, or cooking, which might impact the food’s safety characteristics or nutritional qualities. For example, one soybean variety was modified to alter the levels of oleic acid in the beans. Because the oil from this soybean is significantly different when compared to conventional soybean oil, we advised the company to adopt a new name for that oil, a name that reflects the intended change.

He went on to say that the FDA still did “not have data or other information to form a basis for concluding that the fact that a food (or its ingredients) was produced using [genetic engineering] is material within the meaning of 201(n) [of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act] and therefore, constitutes information that must be disclosed as part of a [genetically engineered] product’s labeling. Hence, we believe that we have neither a scientific nor a legal basis to require such labeling” (emphasis added).

Moreover, the federal courts have found that mandatory labeling to identify “genetically engineered” products, whether imposed at the state or federal level, would violate the constitutional guarantee of commercial free speech. They specifically rejected the notion that that consumers have a “right to know” non-material information.

Undaunted by the science or the law, pro-labeling activists continue to argue that consumers have a “right to know” the “genetic status” of their food; just tell people if their corn flakes have been genetically engineered and let them decide what to buy, they say. Their protestations notwithstanding, it is clear that the activists are not really in favor of consumers having choices. During the campaigning in California on Proposition 37, they made no bones about mandatory labeling being merely the first step toward the complete elimination of such foods—and their benefits—from the marketplace. 

Besides, consumers already have plenty of information about the “genetic status” of the foods they buy. From 2000-09 alone, roughly 7,000 new foods and beverages with voluntary “GE-free” labeling debuted in U.S. supermarkets. Among these are countless dairy products that proudly tout their non-GE pedigrees. In addition, the organic industry boasts that certified foods cannot contain GE ingredients, and various food companies and activist groups have created websites, pocket guides, and even smart phone apps that direct purchasers to GE-free products. With all this information freely available, consumers already have what they need to choose, proving once again that market forces often are better than government fiat at sorting out these sorts of issues. 

As we explain, this is not the first time the administration’s bias against safe genetically modified foods has reared its ugly head. 

By mid-April 2012, after an excruciating (and excessive) eight-year review, the FDA was ready to take the final step to approve a genetically engineered, farmed salmon that reaches mature size faster than its unmodified cohorts but is otherwise indistinguishable from them.

The release of the needed Environmental Assessment was, however, blocked by the White House for eight months (and as this article went to press, the salmon still had not been approved). As American Enterprise Institute fellow and science writer Jon Entine chronicled in December 2012 following an exhaustive investigation, according to sources within the government, the delay “came after discussions late last spring between Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius’ [sic] office and officials linked to Valerie Jarrett at the Executive Office [of the President], who were debating the political implications of approving the [genetically engineered] salmon. Genetically modified plants and animals are controversial among the president’s political base, which was thought critical to his reelection efforts during a low point in the president’s popularity.” That says it all. 

Entine concluded: “The White House blocked it for brazenly political reasons. That’s a subversion of the scientific process and of the government’s supposedly independent approval process, which does no one any good.” A similar sort of politically motivated subversion may be responsible for the feds’ decision to give the high-profile labeling vigilantes a free pass.

The government’s failure to enforce the law undermines the provisions of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act; allows activists’ illegal activities to misinform consumers; makes safe and wholesome foods unsellable; and sends the message that if you cannot persuade policymakers through the democratic process, the government will look the other way as you commit crimes to achieve your political agenda.

What ever happened to the rule of law?

In particular, these witnesses are expected to testify about how political considerations loomed over the entire affair.  In the immediate aftermath of the massacre, the Obama Administration was slow to call it an act of terrorism – instead blaming a short film uploaded to YouTube that was being protested in other Muslim countries.  Since then, information has leaked out that shows the White House knew a lot more a lot sooner than was originally suggested.  And the talking points, like the ones used by American ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, went through a thorough editing process that seemed more geared for pre-election damage control than sharing real information.

Members of the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network are speaking out about the hearing and the Benghazi debacle.

Project 21 member Darryn “Dutch” Martin, a former State Department diplomat who served on the African continent, said:

I firmly believe that the congressional hearings on the Benghazi scandal will make Watergate look like a walk in the park.

Whereas nobody died during Watergate, four Americans – including our ambassador to Libya – were killed in a planned terrorist attack.  It was not the result of some spontaneous anti-American demonstration as first claimed by the Obama Administration.

I consider the whistleblowers who stepped forward to testify to be patriots.  They are honoring the memories of those Americans whose lives were lost last September 11 by coming forward and letting the truth be known.

Project 21 co-chairman and former congressional leadership staff member Horace Cooper said:

So many falsehoods, and so little time.

The truth about the loss of lives of a U.S. ambassador and other brave Americans will not go away.  Almost everything the Obama Administration told us about the terrorist attack has proven to be false.

We were told that it was all about a movie.  That’s false.  They said it was a spontaneous protest.  That’s false.  They said there was no evidence of al Qaeda or terrorism.  False.  They said they did all they could to help the victims.  False.  They said they did not prevent help from coming.  False.

Hopefully, the hearings will let the American people and especially the families of those killed at least understand what really happened.  Then it’s our job to hold the responsible parties accountable.

Cherylyn Harley LeBon, the other co-chairman of Project 21 and a former counsel for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, added:

This congressional hearing will hopefully provide clarity and perhaps some closure for the families of the Benghazi victims.

Despite claims from the Obama Administration that a thorough investigation has occurred, testimony is apparently forthcoming which is contrary to White House assertions.  In fact, a U.S. diplomat alleges that the reluctance to send Special Forces may have deprived wounded Americans in Benghazi of first aid.

The families and rest of America really deserve honest answers.

Project 21 member Demetrius Minor said:

The apparent White House cover-up of the Benghazi murders that occurred last September is beyond appalling.

It should make every American uncomfortable that lies are still constantly being told while the truth has remained clandestine.

Kevin Martin, a Project 21 member and veteran of the U.S. Navy, pointed out:

Finally, after more than eight months of blockage, Congress will hear from whistleblowers expected to expose efforts by the then-Hillary Clinton-led Department of State to deliberately mislead the public about the reasons behind the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.

Evidence has come to light that points to a well-coordinated attack carried out by al Qaeda loyalists in Libya, the disapproval of a military response to the attacks by the Obama Administration and a public relations effort that ignored facts in an attempt to convince the American public that Islamic anger over a little-known YouTube video caused the attack.  It also appears the State Department sought to intimidate witnesses into silence or forbid them to talk to congressional investigators in what may be a coordinated cover-up effort. 

I hope that partisan politics will not get in the way of finding out the truth behind that tragic chain of events that lead to the death of a U.S. ambassador, a civil employee and two brave former SEALS, who willfully disobeyed orders in a brave and honorable effort to defend our interests in Benghazi, Libya.