Today marks the start of National Pollinator Week, and we need Congress to get serious about protecting bees and other pollinators.
Bees are responsible for pollinating a third of a food, and they are in serious trouble, largely because of bee-toxic pesticides called “neonics.” You may have heard of neonics before - neonics are the most widely used insecticides in the world, and exposure to neonics has become a key culprit in bee population losses.
Last summer, 50,000 bumblebees were killed in a parking lot in Oregon by these very chemicals. In December, the European Union began a two year ban on most neonics. We need to take similar swift action by suspending the use of these chemicals until proven safe to our critical pollinators.
Thankfully, the Saving America's Pollinators Act seeks to do precisely that. This bill calls for the suspension of neonics on plants attractive to bees until a full review of scientific evidence indicates they are safe and a field study demonstrates no harmful impacts to pollinators.
This much-needed legislation also requires our government agencies to monitor the health of native bee populations, and to identify and publicly report the likely causes of unusual bee kills.
Tell your Representative to support the Saving America's Pollinators Act and protect our bees!
Thanks for everything you do,
Center for Food Safety
PS – Join us for an eTownhall tonight and all week long on Twitter and Facebook!
Monday, 6/16: eTownhall, live streaming 6pm PT/9pm ET
"What's the buzz about?: A conversation about bee declines, impacts on our food system & what you can do about it." Co-sponsored by Center for Food Safety, this event will be live streamed from the Berkeley Food Institute. To RSVP & receive the streaming link, please go to http://bit.ly/BeeTownHall. And be sure to submit questions for the panelists during the event via Twitter with the hashtag #BeeChat.
Daily Twitter chats, 10am PT/1pm ET, #pollinatorchat
Each day of Pollinator Week, we'll be investigating a different topic in our Twitter chat. Join the conversation online with the hashtag #pollinatorchat.
Check out our website, Twitter and Facebook pages every day to see the daily winners of our second annual Pollinator Photography contest.
Contact Us
CFS welcomes your questions and comments. Please contact us at office@centerforfoodsafety.org, or at one of our offices.
National Headquarters
660 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, #302
Washington, DC 20003
Phone (202) 547-9359 | fax(202) 547-9429
Comments