Pollinators And Power

002 / STACY MALKANON EXPOSING CHEMICAL INDUSTRY CRIMES

Stacy researches and reports on pesticide and food industry lobbying and propaganda campaigns, and the health effects of chemicals that we're exposed to through our food.  US Right to Know is a leading source of information about the Roundup cancer trials, and is posting all the Monsanto papers from the trials on their website, usrtk.org.

Stacy Malkan

Terry Oxford / Pollinators And Power

 

FURTHER READING

US RIGHT TO KNOW

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NEW YORK TIMES

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Terry:  Welcome to Pollinators and Power.  I'm Terry Oxford and I'm a Pollinator Advocate in San Francisco, California.  Today's podcast is with Stacy Malkan of US Right to Know. Stacy researches and reports on pesticide and food industry lobbying and propaganda campaigns, and the health effects of chemicals that we're exposed to through our food.  US Right to Know is a leading source of information about the Roundup cancer trials, and is posting all the Monsanto papers from the trials on their website, usrtk.org.

The documents are uncovering and investigating what goes on behind the scenes of our food system.  Stacy, thanks so much for talking with me today. I just want to tell you that I'm so happy that you're here and that I'm following your work with the Monsanto trials and finding it really exciting and riveting.  And I want to see if I could ask you a couple of questions to start and then let you just go.

Stacy:  Yes, that sounds great.  And thank you so much for having me, Terry, I'm happy to talk with you today.

Terry:  Okay. So, following what you've been writing about on US Right to Know.  It looks like Monsanto’s been gaming the system, gaming the science, creating (journalist and politician) Watch Lists, circling the wagons, and including global regulatory agencies as allies to jointly claim, ‘The product is safe if the label is followed’.  And I'm just going to ask you a question. I wish I could say off the record, but it's on the record. What kind of people and corporations are in charge of our food?!?

Stacy:  Well, it's really disturbing.  I mean to look at the examples you're talking about. Basically, the documents are just falling out of the closet in heaps showing many examples of documented deceptions for years in all the realms you just mentioned, the science, the regulatory arena, media, many dirty, underhanded PR tricks, lobbying tricks.  Of course, this is all about their policy agenda. It's all about keeping products unregulated, hiding the health harms of their products, and continuing to do business as usual because that's how they're making money.

And to your question of what kind of people. Unfortunately, this is endemic to the entire system that we operate in the economic system.  I mean, if you look at the agrochemical industry, what's fascinating is we're talking about one of the largest firms in the world that, in an industry that has recently consolidated into three companies that have had long histories of doing this exact thing; hiding the health harms of their products, lying about it, getting away for as long as possible with selling toxic products, and evading the responsibility and accountability, in order to keep the profits rolling in.

So that's unfortunately how, the agrochemical industry works, how our economic system works and we've got to recreate the way we do business.  And with the food system, of course, as you said, we're talking about our food. This is the food we're eating and feeding our children that is sprayed with pesticides and genetically engineered to tolerate pesticides that have increased the amount we're all being exposed to.  And so, this is really quite urgent that we figure out how to clean this up and change the food system.

Terry:  So, yeah, the thing about it is that this is business as usual for many of these corporations that run our food and have been for decades.  And it's really interesting to me, especially reading about the Watch Lists. So, I'm really focused in on, as a Pollinator Advocate, on how did we get here? How did we get to the planet basically being poisoned and insects dying of our crops. That everything that we grow is deadly.  And I know that Bayer, Monsanto, Syngenta, BASF, Dow, I know these guys didn't do it alone. They had an army of enablers. And your Watch Lists are fascinating to me. Can you talk about that in detail?

Stacy:  Sure. So, the Watch Lists is a scandal that fell out of the closet last week and actually didn't come from the trials. But it was a whistleblower at one of the PR firms in France, who worked, I believe that source was a person that worked for FleishmanHillard, which is one of the largest PR firms in the world.  Bayer started working with them and so did Monsanto in 2013, to try to rehabilitate their image in the United States. They were under tremendous pressure over GMO labeling, and everything that they did to stop the labeling and refuse transparency.

So, they were under fire. They hired these PR firms to, basically just promote their products worldwide, get these pesky calls for transparency out of the way, try to keep the products unregulated, etc.  So, what happened in France was that this whistleblower came forward with the watch list or the Monsanto File. Basically, it had 200 names of people in France. They were mostly journalists, but also policy makers, different NGOs, anyone who is seen as an influencer in the debate over glyphosate in France.

And the list was very detailed.  It had people's personal addresses, telephone numbers, how to contact them, but also their political opinions, affiliations, their level of engagement in regards to Monsanto.  Just everything you would want to know. And the people in France were really upset and not only that, they opened a criminal probe because they said it's in violation of the law actually to keep these detailed records, and also to transfer them out of the country.  And so, the criminal prosecutors in France are looking into it.

Le Monde has filed a complaint.  The AFP news agency has filed a complaint.  Everybody who's on the list is getting up in arms and it's really caused a lot of fury, a lot of media coverage in France looking into this.  And then Bayer came out and admitted afterwards, “Well, we've actually got these Watch Lists for seven countries in Europe and the European Union,” so there's more coming.  I think that we'll find out about other Watch Lists and what they've done. What they do with this information, of course is a big question.

But one of the interesting things is the reaction in the US. And the PR firms are upset too because Bayer actually sidelined FleishmanHillard, put them on suspension.  It (Bayer) said they were going to investigate them. So that's a pretty big deal that you have one of the world's biggest chemical companies at odds with one of the world's biggest PR firms.  But it really says a lot about where we're at in this time. The U.S. PR industry was like, “Well, you know, what’s the big deal? People do this all the time. They track people. That's how PR is done!”

I think, you and I, Terry, because we've talked about that. They're watching very closely, what everyone in the US does.  What we say, tracking us on social media. We know this, I hope everyone knows this. And one of the things that came out of the Monsanto trials was, they called it, ‘Let Nothing Go’ program’.  Monsanto had a program called Let Nothing Go, which was basically, PR firms were deployed to push back on anyone on social media answering, or speaking out, or raising concerns in any way, about pesticides or GMOs.

And these aren't even necessarily influencers. Just people on social media raising these topics were getting push back from trolls, from people who aren't really necessarily people. That's what these PR firms do. They have lots of different social media accounts and they'll make conversations with people on Twitter, on Facebook, and you'll notice there's often a commonality to those interactions.  It's very personal. They try to shame and silence. They won't debate the issues. It's very adversarial. I think it's especially bad on women, on people of color.

It's very authoritarian.  And all the while, I mean, it's just gross because all the while they claim to be standing up for science.  But if you actually look at these groups, and that's what I do. A lot of at US Right to Know investigated the groups. I write fact sheets about some of the leading front groups.  And they relentlessly attack scientists and, vicious, using vicious words, personal attacks, trying to discredit them and destroy their careers while they claim the mantle of being ‘for science’.  I mean, it just needs to stop. I think it needs to stop.

“But one of the interesting things I thought that came out of those emails was one that just outright said that the University of Florida has a, “Stance on GMOs.” So, this is a university that's taking a stand on a product that is, “Harmonious with Monsanto”.”~Stacy Malkan

Terry:  And it's as old as humanity.  Abuse of power always takes the same form.  It's got an authoritarian voice that speaks in a patriarchal way with clear authority.  It's got institutions behind it, that they've gathered. Which in this case, Land Grant Universities are the institutions that have often spoken for the chemical industry because they work hand in hand with chemical agriculture.

And then it also requires that shaming or silencing to keep people down.  People that do know things, like whistleblowers, there's always the fear of shaming and they’ll use those tools.  It's how corporations like the tobacco industry, the sugar industry, they all use the same playbook. It's really interesting to me to see it unfolding in plain sight, out in daylight now, the spotlight is on.  And you guys are doing it. US Right to Know, I'm a big fan.

Stacy:  Thank you.  I appreciate that.  And, we're trying and there's a lot of increasing recognition across the media, across opinion leaders because these examples are so stark, they’re so documented, they're so obvious. And all the links are starting to come together about how the system works.  And as you said, who's backing up who, one of the disturbing aspects being the Universities.

For just one example, we did Freedom of Information Act requests on a University of Florida professor. And lots of information came out about how he was doing things, not the way he was saying in public that he was doing things.  And many, many examples of just totally misleading the public. But one of the interesting things I thought that came out of those emails was one that just outright said that the University of Florida has a, “Stance on GMOs.” So, this is a university that's taking a stand on a product that is, “Harmonious with Monsanto”.

So, they really are saying in this instance and in others, ‘We as a University are standing behind this corporation's products’.  We're going to have a stance on it. We're going to promote it. We see it as our job to convince people who aren't convinced that they need to be convinced. That the system of industrial agriculture that is very dependent on pesticides and genetically engineered patented foods, monocultures that are causing all sorts of environmental issues and health concerns.

They see it as their role to promote that system, not as their role to educate the public, look at both sides.  And, the University of Florida is not the only one. Cornell University has an entire propaganda program. I mean there's nothing else you could really describe it as.  I'm talking about the Cornell Alliance for Science. And it's not scientists doing science, it's communicators trying to communicate a particular agenda and point of view about science that I just described.  Industrial agriculture, genetically engineered foods and pesticides is the system that African countries should adopt.

That's a big part of the role of this program is to lobby in Africa and to get media stories in Africa.  And also to, again, unfortunately try to silence and discredit anybody who's raising concerns. And you can see the direct links between the rhetoric they use, the front groups attacking scientists, the Monsanto PR plans.  I mean, the links are absolutely clear. So I think in some ways we're really only at the beginning of this, all the information coming out, the links coming together and all of this being made transparent and public. So it's an interesting time to be doing this work.

Terry:  It really, really is.  And I'm hoping that you guys will start focusing on my favorite bad boys, neonicotinoids and fungicides or, basically Systemics because herbicides work the same way.  They basically move on the inside of the plant, are protected there for years. They don't wash away and they come out in the nectar and the pollen, the carbohydrate and the protein for insects, and that's how they kill pollinators.  

And you can't get this information out there on the beekeeping threads.  They're completely controlled by those trolls. Yes, the same trolls operate in the beekeeping threads too!  And I add, all fingers point to, all roads lead to the Land Grant Universities controlling the narrative about what's killing bees.  It's never the pesticides.

Stacy:  Right. I mean there's, we haven't done as much work on that issue because we're mostly working on the food system and human health, but it's totally integral. All of it is super connected and I'm really concerned about the neonicotinoids, too. And science is really strongly backing that these are dangerous, ecosystem wide and particularly for the bees.  And we see the same set of things playing out, yes. And neonicotinoids are a Bayer product and the narrative was set that, science will be looking into mites. One of the powerful things on this topic was the New York Times story where a scientist just said, that he was told as a researching scientists that the problem with bees is mites.

“It's about the mites stupid,” is basically is what he said he was told.  I mean, so that's pretty clear, right. They're trying to set the research agenda.  Look over here. It’s kind of like, that story about the drunk person who looks for his keys under the lamp.  Even though that's not where he lost them. He lost them over in the parking lot. But he's looking there because that's where the light is. They're shining a light of science on a particular topic that they want to make the story about.  But the interesting stuff is happening over here.

I've seen that again and again. Like literally companies will commission studies on one kind of tumor because they have evidence that their chemical causes a different kind of cancer.  It's just as in the tobacco industry really, where the pioneers on all of these with large research programs they set up to study particular obscure things that had nothing to do with actually trying to figure out whether cigarettes cause cancer.  So, there's many ways to throw up the research, to influence what the media covers.

But what you're talking about there about the silencing. That you can't even bring up the topic among beekeepers is really disturbing. And I really hope that people in those communities look at what's coming out of the Monsanto trials and realize. Because I think a lot of people don't realize they maybe haven't been getting adversarial comments about their work before.  And they start to hear from different people who seem like they're unconnected. You know so academics, communicators, whoever telling them the same story and not realizing that it's all a coordinated storyline that is specifically that they, in some cases, have been targeted to specifically change their mind and influence them, in ways that are really quite calculated.

I mean, there were stories that came out of Syngenta when they were upset that a researcher at UC Berkeley, Tyrone Hayes, who they had hired to look at atrazine and they didn't like his research, which showed that frogs were having basically ovaries growing their testes.  I mean severely concerning, gender bending effects with frogs exposed to atrazine.

So they try to suppress it and then when he wouldn't, they tried to discredit him, but they, the documents that came out and these were written about, by Rachel Aviv and they were quite shocking documents like, meeting to basically try to analyze him and figure out his points of vulnerability so that they could shame and silence him.  That's what goes on.

Terry:  Yeah, the Watch List.  It's the same thing. It's like looking out for investigative journalists that are, that they can do something to, to silence them.  It's the same thing. It's the same tactics.

Stacy:  Yeah and lots of sneaky stuff.  Like another thing that just came out a couple of days ago, because now the French media is all over this and digging up other stuff.  So, the AFP reported that there was a woman in the San Francisco trial recently, the federal trial on roundup who had been telling everyone she was a BBC journalist, a freelancer working with the BBC. And she's, hanging out with the journalists, chatting up the journalists, giving them story ideas and suggesting angles to cover, colleagues talking to colleagues, except she wasn't a journalist.  She worked for a crisis management, PR Firm FTI Consulting that works with Bayer. So there's lots of ways that there's, was trying to get into...

Terry:  So wait a minute.  What are you saying? Are you saying, she was gathering information?

Stacy:  She was there.  Here's what we know.  She was there at the trial telling people she was a BBC journalist, a freelancer who worked with them and in another UK publication.  And she was just talking with journalists and giving them ideas, and discussing different ways of covering the story. And she never said, “I actually work for a crisis management PR firm that works for Bayer.” She was presenting herself as a journalist. Now what she was doing, or what kind of impact who knows? I do know that…well, FTI Consulting said she wasn't supposed to be doing that.  She was only there to take notes. So they're trying to distance from it.

Terry:  Distancing themselves.

Stacy:  I do also know there was another person from FTI Consulting at that trial who was not undercover.  He was the consulting firm guy. He actually yelled at my colleague, telling her she wasn't a real journalist.  So here we've got two people from FTI Consulting at the trial. One of them is yelling at my colleague telling her she's not a real journalist and the other one's pretending to be a journalist chatting up reporters.  I mean, it's really sloppy low brow stuff. It's basically, here's what it is. It's a desperation campaign. It's anything and everything they can do to try to stop the story on glyphosate, stop people studying it, stop people talking about it, stop people banning it.  They've got to keep the system going so that they can keep their profits rolling in.

Terry:  I look at these guys and I think, they probably, they Think Tank everything.  They know exactly what they're doing all the time and it looks like they may have made a mistake buying Monsanto.  It looks like Bayer may have made a mistake buying Monsanto. But there's something I keep hearing over and over and over again.  And all the reports that Bayer’s written and that Syngenta has written and that UC Davis has written and it's this; Bayer is appealing the cases and stands by its position that, and this is in quotes, “regulatory authorities around the world consider glyphosate based herbicides as safe when used as directed”.

So those words, “used as directed”.  I think that this is going to be their out.  What is going to be, their out. They're going to say you didn't use it as directed.  So what I'm asking you is; these guys have gamed the system, they've spent a lot of money trying to figure out how to commit these, in my opinion, world class crimes, Ecocide crimes, and they're not the type that's just going to stand alone and take responsibility.

I think what they're going to do is include the regulatory agencies globally that they have gamed, and juked the stats and changed the science or made up their own science and will try and spread out the responsibility so that they're not standing alone taking the brunt of this.  Do you have any thoughts about that because I just believe that these guys know how to abuse power and this might be one of their game plans.

Stacy:  Well certainly they're going to try to do whatever they can to reduce the liability on the roundup trials.  We don't know what that will look like going forward. The federal judge in San Francisco has told them to start settlement negotiations.  I think they eventually probably will settle but who knows when or what that will look like. I mean, what you are identifying is a bigger problem and again, it's not just Bayer, it's not just pesticides, it's the way, it's the amount of power and control that corporations have over our regulatory systems.  And in the US, that's just become so obvious.

And it's in the Trump era.  And it's of course not just Trump.  Obama had the agrochemical industry players in places of high influence and they have all the way back through several presidencies.  But what's new in the Trump era that I think is so interesting is that, I mean, it's just so brazen! They've put in charge of our public agencies, people who’ve publicly stated that they want to dismantle those agencies. That they don't want the EPA to have power, that they don't believe in public education or labor unions or labor organizing or laborers.

I mean, it's just really brazen.  And so it was interesting when the EPA recently came out and said, okay, we've looked at this and now we think glyphosate is safe.  And it didn't really get any media coverage because, I mean, the, I complete, I believe that the EPA is a crucial agency that we need to rescue and fix and elevate to the position that used to have as a global leader in public health and safety but we also have to admit that it's absolutely not that, right now. It's been captured by corporations

People inside those agencies are upset.  They're leaving. I mean, certainly I think and I hope we'll see people coming forward with documents, with more information, with just bringing transparency to what's gone on and it's a process whereby, I mean, we've got to build a democratic movement in this country to take back our government from the corporations.  And I hope we see that happening.

I mean, I'm really encouraged by some of the leaders in the Democratic field for the presidency that are talking about very sweeping bold plans. Like Elizabeth Warren saying we need to break up big agriculture and Bernie's plans for democratizing agriculture and Tulsi Gavrik saying we need to look at banning glyphosate.  I mean, these are policies that need to be put in the center of the national debate at the highest levels about our political system.

And I think its these issues that are going to motivate people to get more active and I always say this about climate change is such a, of course, bearing down disaster and I think despite all the noise around what they've tried to do to confuse people about science, people across our society know how big of a problem it is and want to do something about it, but they don't know what to do about it.  With the food system, there are things, it's the same set of issues in some cases the same set of players, the same strategies that they're running. But we CAN do something about it and we can make different choices about what we buy. We can support local agriculture systems.

There's just a lot of different ways to intervene in the system and make choices that can do something and have an impact right now.  So, I am so glad that people are talking about agricultural issues at the highest levels of our political system. And I hope it continues.  And I think that's the way to get women especially motivated and engaged in politics. We need to give them a vision that will inspire them to move forward and to think and to know that what we do matters, and that we can make a difference every day.

Terry:  I have distilled my message down to a really simple one.  And that is to save pollinators is to save ourselves. And the only way we're going to do that is to buy organic. Create a demand, a consumer demand for organic food, which is real organic. And I'm going to be doing a podcast on what is real organic right now because not only have they gamed the system, but they've gamed organic branding.  These industries have also taken over the organic labeling and have created confusion and doubt because, that's what they do!

It's all about deflection, polarizing, creating doubt and confusion.  These are the tools that they've implemented in our food system. And that's what gets me, that's what kills me about this, is that people trust their food.  And the fact is that you cannot. And I know that's a horrible, horrible message, but we’d better get used to it and start thinking about it because these guys shouldn't be anywhere near our food.  And they're all in it! They're in the entire infrastructure around our food.

Stacy:  Well they control our food, yes.  And don't, please don't let it kill you because we need you and people like you, speaking in all aspects of the food system. Because our knowledge and that for all of us that can also start with our own families and circles and communities and telling people about why these issues matter and giving them a place to go and find info and we've got tons of these documents that I mentioned on our website at usrtk.org.  And we're also doing, a newsletter every week with food news about our health, with all the top studies and news coverage and what we're finding out in our investigation. So please also sign up for our newsletter at usrtk.org.

Terry:  Stacy, you're amazing.  I'm so happy you spoke with me today and as usual you just knocked it out of the park.

Stacy:  Thank you Terry. You too are really standing up for the bees and the trees and for life.  I really appreciate your work.

Terry:  I'm Terry Oxford and this is Pollinators and Power.  Thanks for listening.

Interview with Professor Dave Goulson by Terry Oxford

001 / PROFESSOR DAVE GOULSONTHE ONLY WAY TO HELP POLLINATORS IS WITH ORGANIC PLANTS AND TREES

Professor Dave Goulson

Terry Oxford / Pollinators And Power

Professor Dave Goulson of Sussex University comes to you from Slow Food International.  On May 20, Slow Food is launching a brand-new Community, Slow Bees! Slow Bees mission is to promote Seasonal, Local and Organic food for all pollinators.  

FURTHER READING

SLOW FOOD INTERNATIONAL

SLOW BEES

GOULSON LAB

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Terry: Welcome to Pollinators and Power.  I'm Terry Oxford and I’m a Pollinator Advocate in San Francisco, California.  Today's podcast of Professor Dave Goulson of Sussex University comes to you from Slow Food International.  On May 20, Slow Food is launching a brand-new Community, Slow Bees! Slow Bees mission is to promote Seasonal, Local and Organic food for all pollinators.  

Today I'm interviewing Professor Dave Goulson, of University of Sussex, who received his Bachelor’s Degree in Biology from Oxford University.  He followed that up with a doctorate on Butterfly Ecology at Oxford Brookes University and lectured in Biology for 11 years at the University of Southampton, where he began to study bumblebees in earnest.  Professor Goulson is author of more than 290 scientific articles in the ecology and conservation of bumblebees and other insects. He has also published many books of what I consider ‘bibles’ of native pollinators, namely ‘Bumblebees, Their Behavior, Ecology and Conservation’ from Oxford University Press.  His bestseller, ‘A Sting in the Tale’ in 2014, ‘A Buzz in the Meadow’, ‘Bee Quest’ in 2017 and this year ‘The Garden Jungle,’ which I would like to delve into later. Professor Goulson founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in 2006, a charity, which has grown to over 12,000 members. And in 2015 he was named number 8th of 50 of the most influential people in conservation by BBC Wildlife Magazine.  Welcome Professor Goulson. Thank you for speaking with me, Slow Bees and Slow Food International today. May I call you Dave?

Dave:  Of course, yes. My pleasure to be here.

Terry:  Let’s start with some good news because when we talk about pollinators, the news is pretty grim and people really can't hear very much of that.  So, I’ve heard you have some land that you’re working on to support bees. Can you tell us some happy news about how they're responding?

Dave:  Yeah, so a few years ago now, 15 years ago, I bought a little farm in France in the middle of nowhere, which up until that time had been used for arable crops and there wasn't really much wildlife particularly there.  And I’ve been slowly turning the whole lot into basically a wild flower meadow, which is frustratingly slow at times but every year a few more flowers arrive and a few more bees arrive and it's really beautiful now. It’s a great place to go and relax and listen to the bees and see the butterflies flapping about and you’ve done, you know, a little thing to make the world a bit better.

Terry:  It sounds like an oasis.  Sounds like there is home and habitat for all sorts of different things.

Dave:  Yeah, I mean it is kind of sad that, you know, a lot of farmland these days is so inhospitable to insect life.  But it can be reversed, you know, it doesn’t have to be that way and it's amazing how quickly things can recover if we just stop, you know, stop messing things up, stop spraying pesticides, stop ploughing it up every year.  You know, insects are pretty resilient and thankfully not many have gone extinct yet. So, the potential is there for them to recover well, we just need to give them a chance.

Terry: That's a great message, that's really good news.  I agree. That's my personal experience here in California too. A friend of mine started a farm just a couple of years ago and I go up there for sanity because there are so many insects.  So, it's really a joy to see that if you do plant it, they will come.

Dave:  Yeah. Kevin Costner, got it right.

Terry:  So, a lot of people think or hear the word bee and they just think of honeybees automatically.  Can you please define the difference between our commercially managed European honeybee and what are native bees and pollinators?

Dave:  Yeah, of course. So, there are a great number of species of bee in the world and, yeah many people have no idea at all as you say. I think quite a lot of people mistakenly believe there is just one species of bee and it lives in a hive and it makes honey and it pollinates everything.  But actually it couldn’t be much further from the truth. There are 20,000 species of bee, in which the domestic honeybee is just one. They’re really diverse, they live all over the world, they come in all of colors and shapes, and sizes and they all tend to – they’re all pollinators. Between them they deliver the majority of crop pollination and wildflower pollination, this is the wild bees rather than the honeybees.  But it goes beyond bees, which is something else that isn't really widely appreciated. There are many, many other insects that are really important pollinators; hover flies and butterflies, and moths and beetles, and wasps and umpteen more. So for example the cacao that gives us chocolate is pollinated by tiny little flies, so if we didn’t have these little flies we wouldn’t have chocolate and how disastrous would that be.

Terry:  Pretty bad.

Dave:  I’d say it would, it would be a dire situation.  So, we need to look after all of these insects ideally.  Honeybees, you know, we shouldn’t forget about them, they’re really important. They are the single most important pollinator species in the world.  But they’re not even a native species of course in the Americas. And, you know, the pollination done by all of the other pollinators far outstrips that delivered by honeybees for most crops, but not all.

Terry:  Right. Well, and the reason that they’re even commercially managed like they are, is because, you know, during the mid-century, agriculture started becoming more chemical intensive.  Farmers found that there were no native pollinators left because they’d obviously been killed by the poisons. So, the commercially managed migratory beekeeping system that we know here in the US was created because of the loss of the natives.  So, getting back to an ecology where it's safe and where native pollinators, no matter where you are in the world, where your native pollinators are supported is, I think a goal that would be an honorable thing that all humans could work toward, which means organic farming.

Dave:  Yeah, I was just going to add to that, I mean, it's actually an enormously risky strategy to end up in a situation where a farmer’s crop, the classic example being the almonds of California, where the crop is entirely dependent on that importation of countless millions of honeybees.  There's just one species left there that does nearly all of the pollination. If anything goes wrong, if anything happens to that supply of honeybees then, you know, that crop will be wiped out. Naturally most plant species are pollinated by dozens of different pollinators and if something happens to one of them, somebody else will step in, the plant will still produce seed.  But we’ve engineered this very unnatural situation where we’ve wiped out most of the native pollinators, as you say. And that’s really dangerous, you know, because we do need these pollinated crops. We couldn't feed the seven billion people in the world without adequate crop pollination and we are absolutely crazy if we rely on just one species to do that.

Terry: Right.  And that's how it's become! We’re right there. It just seems like the end is almost here in California. It looks like it's the end game because they're just not surviving. The honeybees that are being brought in are still being exposed to all sorts of chemicals when they're released off the trucks.  And then they don't do well and I think this year is reported to be one of the worst years. They've managed to manipulate the hive (numbers) and the bees enough to kind of hobble it (the system) along but there is no good end in sight. And they're exposed to other diseases, problems and issues and then starvation, too! Because once the almond trees have stopped producing flowers, what do they do?

Dave:  Yeah, you’ve got the sort of desolate landscape, it's pretty sad. I also was astonished to read, I mean after all the concern about the state of honeybee health, particularly in the Americas with your migratory beekeeping, which I’m glad to say is a system that we don’t really have in the rest the world.  But there was a recent study that revealed that they’re still spraying insecticides onto the almond during the blossoming period when the honeybees are active!  Well, that’s just insane! And apparently, the farmers have been told that these were bee-safe insecticides which, you know, is an oxymoron if ever there was one. I mean there is no such things as an insecticide that doesn't kill bees but does kill the ‘bad insects’, so to speak.  So, I was astonished just how naïve and stupid we continue to be.

Terry:  Yeah. And it seems like, you know, the clock is ticking. We've got to get to a state of conservation where we’re really looking at the future instead of just looking at short term gain. Those specialty crops are the most unsustainable, it seems.  And people need to wake up to how important this is and that business as usual is not appropriate anymore. It’s just not appropriate. Biomass would be considered, and correct me, would be considered almost the krill in the ocean?

Dave:  Yeah. I mean it's a similar kind of thing, you know, and actually there's an obvious parallel which is the krill are the base of the food chain in the ocean.  And of course, insects are that on land. We don't eat them but we're in a small minority in that respect.  Most bird species, bats, lizards, frogs and so on, and many fresh water fish, all eat insects.  So, if the insects are disappearing, that's all the food disappearing for the beautiful birds and other animals that we really want. Most people don’t care much about insects themselves but they do care about pretty birds, and so on.  And if that's the case, then again, they should be deeply concerned about what's happening because it's basically wiping out the whole food web if we lose the insects.

Terry:  Right. And I think you’ve made a really good point that we can appreciate what is pretty to our eye.  But I think that's really telling about how humans think about wildlife and insects. That it's separate from us because it looks different from us.  And I think that’s an evolution that humans might be ready to leap forward with right now. A conscious evolution that ‘The Other’, that which is unfamiliar to us, is really most important.  And I love that parallel with native bees because the European honeybee gets all the press but the reality is, that the natives, no matter where you are, are the important species, the indicator species. And that's why I love your books so much.  I think they’re really important. You wrote something on your blog called Pesticides in Bee Friendly Flowers.  Can you explain what Systemics are and how they travel through the plant and then how the poison is dispersed to a pollinators food?  So, the Systemics again are Neonics (Neonicotinoids), they're Fungicides, they can be Herbicides.

Dave:  Yeah, sure.  So, I got kind of involved in studying pesticides relatively recently in my career.  I guess it was about nine years ago when this controversy over neonicotinoids, neonics for short, blew up.  And they're basically a fairly new generation of insecticides that have been around since the mid-1990s. And it became very popular with farmers because they're very toxic to insect pests and they’re systemic so the majority of the use of these chemicals is a seed dressing, particularly in Europe. I'm not sure is it’s quite the same in the US but I think it largely is.  And so, farmers would just buy and still do buy their seeds coated in these insecticides. And the idea is that farmers simply sow the seeds and the chemical is water soluble and it dissolves in the damp soil, goes into the soiled water and the little seedling crop sucks up the chemical and it goes to all the parts of the crop and makes it toxic to insect pest. So, the farmer basically doesn't do anything apart from buy the seed and sow it into the ground. And you can see why that sounds like a pretty attractive sort of simple system of pest control to the farmer.  And is often billed as providing really good targeting, much better than spraying insecticides from the back of a boom on a tractor to where they can blow around in the wind, or whatever.

And so they took off and we’ve reached a point where almost every arable crop in the developed world was being treated with these chemicals.  But as you know, we're all now aware, it turned out that it actually wasn't quite as simple as that and that these chemicals were nowhere near as well-targeted as we thought.  So, part of the problem, well there's enough… where do I start, there's so many problems! And the first issue that was flagged up was because they're systemic they get all the parts of the crop.  If it's a flowering crop they go into the nectar and the pollen and so if you grow sunflowers or corn, or oilseed rape canola, you guys call it or anything else that flowers and needs pollinating. And when the bees come to visit it they’re getting a dose of insecticide and these are neurotoxins that are astonishingly poisonous to all insect life.  So, to try and illustrate that the toxicity of insecticides is usually measured by, I think called the LD50 that stands for the lethal dose that kills 50% of the test animals, it’s a standard measure. So, for the most commonly used neonicotinoid or the first one that was really popular was a thing called Imidacloprid.

And it takes just four billionths of a gram to deliver an LD50 to a honeybee and which, and you can't visualize four billionths of a gram…your brain can't compute such small amounts.  But to put that in another way that means one teaspoon of Imidacloprid, which is five grams, is enough to kill one and a quarter billion honeybees. And we're applying hundreds of thousands of kilos of this stuff to the landscape. We’re applying enough to kill every bee on the planet thousands of times over.  And we know that they’re being exposed via the nectar and pollen of the crop. But it turns out that it isn't just via the nectar and pollen of flowering crops and the work we did and was one of the first to flag this up. We looked in wildflowers growing on farmland in the field edges and hedgerows and so on. And we found that the nectar and pollen of those was also contaminated with these systemic insecticides.  It turns out that when the farmer sows the seed, the majority of the chemical, about 95% of it in fact isn’t taken up by the crop at all. It's going into soil and the soil water. It can accumulate in the soil, it can leach into streams, it could be taken up by wildflowers growing on farmland just as easily as it's taken up by the crop. And so essentially you end up with the entire landscape being permeated with these phenomenally poisonous neurotoxins.

And so, there was a recent study done by Swiss scientists where they collected honey samples from around the world and screened them for neonics. 75% of them including from remote Pacific Islands and all sort of places where you might not imagine many pesticides were used, 75% of them contained these insecticidal neurotoxins.  Which basically means that the three quarters of the world's bees are routinely being exposed to chemicals designed to kill insects. And so, you know, we shouldn't really be surprised that the honeybees are suffering from health problems. And if honeybees are being exposed it means that every other pollinator is also being exposed to these same chemicals.  So, you know, I mean it's a catastrophe and it’s enormously frustrating because we keep seeing new generations of pesticides come on to the market and were told that they’re safe. And it often takes 20 or 30 years for us to realize they're not safe and for the scientific evidence to accumulate. And then eventually there are calls for them to be banned. And in the case of the neonics, Europe has been proactive and has banned most of them now but the rest of the world will probably take another 10 or 20 years to realize how harmful they are.  And so, in the US of course, your farmers are still happily using them in huge quantities, sadly. Eventually I'm sure it will be banned but in the meantime some other chemical will have replaced them and it will turn out to be just as bad down the line, I'm sure.

Depressing stuff. So you mentioned this other work we did on ornamental flowers. So if you go to a garden center in the UK or anywhere in Europe, I don’t know whether this also happens in the States, but garden centers have flagged up the plants that are good for pollinators, that are good for wild bees, bumblebees, butterflies and so on.  They often have a picture of a bee on the label of the plant. And it's really popular these days. Lots of people want to look after wildlife. They’ve become aware of the problems bees are facing so when they go to the gardens center they think, "Oh, that's great I'll buy a lavender because that's good for the bees." We bought a whole load of “bee friendly” plants, when I say bee friendly with exclamation marks which you can't see because this is radio but, we bought some of these plants from a whole bunch of different retailers and screened them and I'm sure you can guess where this is going.  They're all full of pesticides. A whole cocktail of pesticides. 70% of them contained these neonicotinoids, quite a few of them contained other insecticides like Pyrethroids, some of them had Organophosphates which are pretty nasty.  Almost all of them had fungicides in them which can act synergistically with insecticides.  So basically people are buying plants, being mis-sold them. They’re buying plants with the best of intentions thinking they're going to bring them home and provide food for pollinators and actually they're accidentally poisoning them.  And I think that's completely outrageous. I would be absolutely willing to bet my last dollar that the situation is at least as bad in the United States as it is here sadly.

Terry:  I think it's a little bit worse here in the US because we don't have the same scientific principles that the EU has. You have the precautionary principle which, before a product or a poison can come on the market has to prove that it's safe for humans and nature.  But what's happened here is business interests come first and then the product has to be proven unsafe by people or organizations or whatever, and so by the time anybody is talking about a product with any sort of effectiveness, the product has been on the market for 15 years.

Dave:  To be honest, I think the EU is better but not that much better, you know, it didn’t stop us allowing neonics to come on to the market and many of the other same chemicals.  We might be a little bit faster to get rid of them but, you know, we've only just banned neonics 24 years after they were introduced. After enormous amounts of environmental harm were done in the meantime. And the EU regulatory process is also subject to pressure from the Agrochemical industry.  They lobby, they manipulate, they do their best to get their products on to the market and keep them there as long as they can and, you know, obviously with the current administration in the States that's a real open door for them. But it’s not that much better in Europe, sadly, I wish it was.

Terry:  Is that the case for France as well?  Any good news?

Dave:  Yeah, so France…European countries have the option to act unilaterally if they wish to.  And France is leading the way there, so they – the European Union banned three neonics, the most toxic ones and the most widely used ones but it didn’t ban all of them.  And France has unilaterally banned the whole lot and has also done something really interesting recently which has banned all pesticides for use in gardens and in city areas, and parks and so on. Which is brilliant because, you know, I and many others have said for years that there is no need or place for pesticides in our gardens where our children play, in the parks and playgrounds and so on.  You know, you could argue that pesticides – some people would argue that pesticides are necessary in farming. I would be happy to argue about that but there is no strong argument that says we need pesticides in our gardens, none at all. And I think it's absolutely brilliant that France have gone ahead and done that. They're not actually the first, I mean some individuals, cities all dotted around the world have this some time ago.  So, for example Toronto banned pesticides some years ago and, you know, Toronto is still standing and hasn’t been overrun with weeds and pests or whatever. It looks like any other city!

Terry:  Right.

Dave:  And then we absolutely don't need these pesticides in, you know, to be available in supermarkets for people to just go and buy for themselves and spray them around their gardens without any training or protective gear.  Probably without bothering to read the label half of the time. Its nuts and so yeah, you know, it would be fantastic if the rest of the world would follow France on that one but I suspect that it won’t happen. But in my dream world it would.

Terry:  So I don't know if you can speak to this through personal experience or through your own research but there was a study by Friends of the Earth just a few years ago. They studied flowering ornamental trees in the Bay Area of San Francisco which is where I am.  And the ranges (of Imidacloprid) that they found in the trees was 24 parts per billion, 44 parts per billion and 860 parts per billion in one Crepe Myrtle.  So, because flowering ornamental trees for a city pollinator advocate, are the most important thing because I don’t have meadows, there's never going to be opportunity for meadows in San Francisco. But what my meadows are, are flowering trees because they're – if you look down on the top of them from a building you can stand and look down and you can see a carpet of flowers! That's a meadow for a bee or a bird!  So, trees are everything and so that kind of landscape industry product, flowering ornamental trees, is something that's not even being looked at yet and I'm terrified of that. Do you have any thoughts about trees or any studies?

Dave:  So this not something I know so much about because thankfully it is not normal practice as far as I'm aware to inject ornamental trees in Europe with neonics, thank God.  But I'm well aware that it’s been going on for many years in North America. Nobody has really looked in any detail how long they last in trees but I do know for example there was work done on the use of neonics to protect grape vines against pests where a single treatment was adequate to keep the vines protected for four years.  And so, you know, clearly they last for multiple years once they’re into a woody plant like a tree. And if there's a really big dose gone in there and it sounds as if at least one of those poor trees was absolutely saturated with this stuff then it probably be decades before, you know, it will dissipate but it will take a long time.  It will be many years. Nobody can tell you exactly how many and it will probably vary by plant species and depending on which neonic and so on, we don’t know.

But you’re absolutely right, you know, trees are really important forage for many species of bee and not least just because of the volume of flowers that the tree can provide, you know. I often advocate people putting in flowering trees in their gardens, even small trees. Because the amount of flowers that can provide compared to, you know, herbaceous low growing plants is usually much greater because it's kind of a three dimensional structure covered in flowers.  And so, you know, yeah it's potentially a really horrific thought to imagine that, you know, most perhaps or even some of the trees in your urban areas are actually kind of death traps for bees. You know, you see it in so many ways where if there are a few dandelions trying to poke their heads up between the cracks in the pavement, they get sprayed off with herbicides. And I don’t know whether you have this problem in the US but in the UK people are always complaining about moles, you know, making mole-hills which they think are unsightly on their lawns so they call in someone to slaughter all the moles and its just like, "Can we not just be a little more tolerant of the rest of the life on the planet?”. You know, this kind of just stamping our foot on anything that inconveniences us in the slightest is just a sort of childish and a depressing response that we really need to grow away from somehow but I don't know how we persuade people.

Terry:  Yeah. Well let's do a good news break.  So, the good news is that Slow Food International has launched a new community called Slow Bees and this podcast is going to be aired on the Slow Food International sites and their social media outlets to help people understand that it's just not about honey, it’s not all about honeybees, that even though we are a group of largely international bee keepers, we’re also pollinator advocates.  And we want people to know that the only way to really help pollinators is to makes sure that their nectar and pollen, that's carbohydrates and protein, are nutritious, diverse and that they have not been treated with systemic poisons like pesticides or fungicides or all the other cocktail that you were speaking about. And we're getting our members to take responsibility for planting pollinator food for all pollinators wherever you live and wherever you place a hive.  So we've hash tagged #onetreeforahive and we’re encouraging bee keepers to take responsibility and support their animals with good, clean food. But also to include everything else, the birds, the earthworms…Everything! It's got to be organic and biodynamic otherwise it's just not going to work. So, I'm excited that they've launched – that Slow Food International has adopted Slow Bees and that it's going to include all pollinators. Which is why we wanted to speak with you, Dave Goulson, being a hero of the pollinators, I'm sure you've got an amazing cape.

Dave:  Yeah, well yellow and black stripes.  I do actually – I don't have a cape but I do have a bee outfit.

Terry:  You do?

Dave:  And I wear it on special occasions, it’s quite warm but…

Terry:  So what are you working on next, your book. Tell us about that?  Has it been published yet?

Dave:  The new book is out in the UK in July, it's already out in Germany actually.  The Germans were very proactive in getting it translated but yeah, I'm pretty excited about that.  I'm really hoping to engage with gardeners and persuade them to, you know, tread more gently, to forget about the perfect kind of croquet lawn approach to managing their lawn and let it grow and let wildflowers grow in it.  And not use pesticides and all the things that we've been talking about because I really think, you know, the gardens are great places for us to reconnect with nature.  They have the potential to be fantastically biodiverse to support lots of wildlife. Not just bees but lots of other things besides. And there's a lot of them, you know, and obviously there are a lot of people in the world, and just in the UK which, you know, a tiny little country really.  We've got about half a million hectares of gardens so there's a big win there potentially if I can win over enough gardeners to get them to grow more wildflowers and generally just subtlety change what they're doing. To be a bit more relaxed and let nature do its thing. And then, you know, if we could change from seeing our gardens as these kind of formal tidy places to a more relaxed kind of mini nature reserves then there's the potential for urban areas to become this huge network of nature reserves where bees and butterflies, and flowers can thrive and, you know, perhaps I'm living in a dream world again I don't know.

Terry:  No, I think it's wonderful, I don’t – well I share your dream but, no I think it's possible that there can be oasis everywhere!  Each yard is an oasis, each tree, street trees are an oasis.

Dave:  Yeah, and if we – and there's also parks and the urban green spaces are owned by the local council and so if we could get those, you know, made more wildlife friendly.  If every park had a meadow area and more trees, flowering trees planted and maybe a pond for the aquatic creatures and, you know, just trying to invite nature into our towns and cities.

Terry:  All right.  Well, you're wonderful.  Thank you so, so much for speaking with us and we’re just grateful that you’re there and that you’re publishing like you are and sharing the message.

Dave:  No, it's a pleasure and keep up the great work, you know, the whole Slow Bee thing sounds fantastic and obviously happy to help anywhere I can.

Terry:  To hear the full conversation with Dave Goulson, please visit urbanbeesanfrancisco.com.  I'm Terry Oxford and this in Pollinators and Power. Thanks for listening.