Syngenta asks EPA to raise insecticide limits while scientists develop robots to replace bees decimated by chemicals

Thursday, March 03, 2016 by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
Tags: neonicotinoid insecticides, deadly pesticides, Syngenta

---

(NaturalNews) Around 95 percent of corn and 70 percent of soy grown in the US and Canada is cloaked in either clothianidin or thiamethoxan. Both chemicals are from a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. Similar to nicotine, neonicotinoids bind to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the cells of the central nervous system. In insects, this triggers a suppressive and deadly response at the cellular level.

In the rush to protect crops from insect damage, scientists have neglected one important detail. The neonicotinoid insecticides can be absorbed into the plant. As the plant matures, the chemical can be transported throughout the plant, most importantly, into the pollen. Over time, pollinators like honeybees can be weakened and compromised. Massive bee die-offs have been occurring around the world where neonicotinoids are heavily used. Without pollinators, all sorts of plants suffer -- especially key vegetable crops and wild herbs. Honeybees pollinate about one-third of the world's food. Without them, $15 billion in agricultural production would be lost each year.

Tiffany Stacker of E&E reported, "Scientists say neonicotinoids can suppress bees' immune systems, making them more vulnerable to viruses and bacteria. The Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to phase out neonicotinoids on wildlife refuges nationwide starting in January 2016."

The insecticides are so catastrophic that the European Union banned the use of them two years ago after validating a study linking neonicotinoids to honeybee colony collapse disorder.

Syngenta wants to raise insecticide limit from 0.1 ppm to 4.9 ppm - a staggering increase

Disdainfully, chemical giant Syngenta has recently asked the US EPA to lift current restrictions on their insecticides, asking regulators to increase the allowable level of thiamethoxan to 4.9 parts per million. The EPA's current allowable level is 0.1 ppm. Syngenta is basically asking the federal government to approve more than 40 times the amount of insecticide in the environment! This type of increase would speed up bee die-offs tragically, probably wiping 90 percent or more of their population from affected ecosystems within the next decade.

That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for the biotechnology-chemical industry. As always, they create a problem and then invent a solution, while the natural world is destroyed in the process. Their solution for having no bees on the planet is simple: develop robot bees.

Scientists develop robot bees to replace bees destroyed by insecticides

At Harvard University, the RoboBee is already up and flying, flapping its wings at 120 times per second. Engineering professor Robert Wood introduced the new robotic bee just a year ago and envisions an entire team of them pollinating fields in the next decade. The bees wouldn't be able to produce raw medicinal honey or propolis. They would simply just pick up and lay down pollen.

"RoboBees will work best when employed as swarms of thousands of individuals, coordinating their actions without relying on a single leader," Wood and his colleagues wrote in Scientific American. "The hive must be resilient enough so that the group can complete its objectives even if many bees fail."

The project is a breakthrough for micro aerial vehicles, but the tiny bots are still unable to communicate with one another or fly on their own. The current model has to be driven by a person. The challenge that the developers now face is fitting flight muscles, sensors and a battery on the robot bee without it weighing more than a gram.

Inventing profitable problem-solution monopoly while destroying Earth

While the RoboBee "solution" could potentially help recover lost pollinators in the natural world, it would overshadow the root problem of an agricultural system dependent on chemicals that are quietly destroying the world and bringing down the entire food system.

This is exactly how herbicide-resistant genetically modified crops work too. Engineered herbicide-resistant crops create the need for more herbicides, thus creating more need for profitable, patented seeds.

What's really happening at this moment in history is corporations are destroying the natural world for profit and forcing people to be dependent on the technological "fix." In this way, science is not progressing mankind but instead stripping him of his humanity and destroying his sacred connection to Earth.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.thedailysheeple.com

http://www.businessinsider.com

http://www.topsecretwriters.com

http://www.scienceworldreport.com

http://www.beyondpesticides.org

http://www.cell.com