U.K. House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee Report Released: Pollinators and Pesticides

Recently, the U.K. Parliment's  House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, issued a report, titled, Pollinators and Pesticides (2013).  According to the 306-page report, available here, the following was discussed:

[t]he Government must introduce a precautionary moratorium on three pesticides linked to the decline of pollinators - imidacloprid, clothianidin and TMX – that suspends their use on flowering crops attractive to pollinators, Parliament’s cross-party green watchdog has said.

The Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, Joan Walley MP, commented:

“Defra seems to be taking an extraordinarily complacent approach to protecting bees given the vital free service that pollinators provide to our economy.

“If farmers had to pollinate fruit and vegetables without the help of insects it would cost hundreds of millions of pounds and we would all be stung by rising food prices.

“Defra Ministers have refused to back EU efforts to protect pollinators and can’t even come up with a convincing plan to encourage bee-friendly farming in the UK.”