Thanks to all of you for coming here.
Also, a special thanks to you, Larry, for making this possible.
I've been on this committee for over six years now and I haven't really heard many more gut-wrenching stories than what you folks are saying today. Clearly this is serious. This is a crisis situation.
Based just on what you folks are saying, we need some kind of a stop or a moratorium until we can independently assess what's going on here. Obviously there appears to be a correlation between the planting of corn and the dead bees, from what you're saying. So there needs to be something undertaken quickly and not just a study put on a shelf somewhere.
I know that nine years ago the U.S. EPA scientists demanded a field study on the potential harm of clothianidin to honeybees. They still don't have action. As a matter of fact, now there are one million Americans filing a legal petition to try to get some action there.
But I just want to see if I understand correctly. This is what I have from this document.
Neonicotinoids are systemic pesticides in which the insecticide is first applied as a seed-coating at planting; the poison is taken up inside the growing plant, perfusing the entire structure of leaves, stem, flower and fruit; it is also expressed in the pollen and nectar. Bees are poisoned as they harvest the pollen and nectar to take back to the hive.
That would happen later. But what you're saying, and also here in recent research in a journal it says that, “the threat of these pesticides through a previously undocumented exposure”—that is the seed planter exhaust, which could explain why this is happening—“the mixture of waste-talc-dust and pesticide which is accidentally expelled into the air as automated planters place neonicotinoid-treated seeds into the ground.”
If that's true, that would be the reason, obviously, why the bees would be dying.
I would just like to have some further comments from you folks on what you feel, specifically, we should be doing. It seems to me we should be placing an immediate moratorium on these chemicals until we get to the bottom of this.
Mr. Ferguson, if you don't mind, I'll start with you and we'll just work our way along for the remaining time. Thank you.