Originally published March 14 2011
Mass honeybee deaths now occurring worldwide, says UN
by Jonathan Benson, staff writer
(NaturalNews) For several decades, colony collapse disorder (CCD) -- a mysterious condition where entire bee colonies die for seemingly no obvious reason -- has been inflicting bee populations across both Europe and the US. But scientists from the United Nations (UN) say the phenomenon is now a global crisis, afflicting bees across China, Japan, and Africa, as well as in other places.
The report, issued by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), explains what many NaturalNews readers already know -- mainly that without bees, there will be no more food. Bees are one of nature's primary pollinators, and over 70 percent of the world's food supply relies on them to grow.
"Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature," said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director. "Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature's services in a world of close to seven billion people."
One such mode of "technological prowess" is the flagrant and irresponsible use of genetically-modified organisms (GMO). GMO technology is heavily reliant on the use of toxic pesticides and herbicides, which several recent studies have pinned to the widespread bee deaths (http://www.naturalnews.com/025287_bees_honey...).
In January, a leaked document revealed that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) actually knowingly approved a bee-killing pesticides known as clothianidin. This Bayer CropScience chemical has been identified as a primary instigator of CCD, and yet it has remained freely available on the market since 1993 when the EPA first approved it.
Pesticides use is obviously not reserved just for GMOs, either. The entire industrial agriculture system that dominates the majority of the US food supply is heavily reliant on toxic pesticides of all varieties, which reports say now pollute over 90 percent of the nation's rivers (http://www.naturalnews.com/027971_pesticides...).
Sources for this story include:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nat...
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