Appeals Court Blocks Pesticide Use Over Concerns About Bees

The nation’s beekeepers won a round.

Four beekeeping organizations and three individual beekeepers petitioned the court to review the agency’s approval of the pesticide under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act in 2013.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did not adequately study the pesticide sulfoxaflor before approving its use in 2013 on a wide variety of crops, including citrus and cotton, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.

Sulfoxaflor’s twisted path through the EPA’s approval process isn’t the first time the agency has green-lighted a neonicotinoid pesticide under dodgy circumstances, as I showed in this 2010 piece on clothianidin, a widely marketed pesticide marketed by Dow’s European rival, Bayer.

Given the precariousness of bee populations, leaving the EPAs registration of sulfoxaflor in place risked more potential environmental harm than vacating it, the court says.

“I am inclined to believe the EPA…decided to register sulfoxaflor unconditionally in response to public pressure for the product and attempted to support its decision retroactively with studies it had previously found inadequate”, said a circuit judge.

“The EPA doesn’t have that [hive-level] information on very many insecticides, if any”, Loarie said.

Dow AgroSciences, which developed and commercialized sulfoxaflor, intervened in the case on behalf of EPA.

“Dow AgroSciences will work with EPA to implement the order and to promptly complete additional regulatory work to support the registration of the products”.

“The EPA registered a pesticide when all the evidence in the record suggested this pesticide is highly toxic to bees”, said attorney Janette Brimmer of Earthjustice, which represented the beekeepers.

The losses have been especially acute in Minnesota and other Upper Midwest states, the largest honey producing area of the country.

According to Earthjustice, a growing body of independent science links a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids to bee declines, both alone and in combination with other factors like disease and malnutrition.

The manufacturers and the EPA say that if used properly, the insecticides are not lethal to honeybees. All neonicotinoids kill insects by interfering with their central nervous system, causing tremors, paralysis, and death.”. The Court concluded that EPA violated federal law when it approved sulfoxaflor without reliable studies regarding the impact that the insecticide would have on honeybee colonies.

Initially, the EPA gave conditional approval to the chemical, meaning that Dow would need to provide more research on its effect on bees.