A group of four scientists within the European Food Safety Authority conspired to present carefully selected evidence on the damage caused by certain pesticides to bee populations in order to have them banned, resulting in massive crop damage, it has been alleged.
The research and consequent ban, which had already been blasted by the British government last year as having “no basis” and being “fundamentally flawed”, is being again questioned after the revelation of a leaked note which has suggested the architects of the ban only reported the facts which supported their hypothesis.
The note details how the four scientists met in 2010 to discuss how to “obtain the necessary policy change, to have these pesticides banned”. The note goes on to describe how they created four studies to simulate the appearance of scientific consensus. A “carefully selected first author” would write a paper calling for a ban due to dangers of neonicotinoid pesticides to birds and insects, which would then be supported by a second policy paper.
The pretext of the research was declining bee numbers in Europe, which as was reported by Breitbart London earlier this year, has not transpired to be as bad as originally thought.
The Times records the content of the note, which takes the form of minutes from the meeting. It reads of their ambitions to control European Union policy: “If we are successful in getting these two papers published, there will be enormous impact, and a campaign led by WWF etc. It will be much harder for politicians to ignore a research paper and a policy forum paper in [a scientific journal]”.
The chief executive of the Crop Protection Association, a group associated with large industrial companies that produce neonicotinoids, said: “The work of [these papers] is regularly cited by activists as being strongly independent research, conducted with the utmost scientific rigour.
“From reading this document it looks to me that this group decided on its conclusions first and then embarked on the research to back them up. That clearly flies in the face of claims that the IUCN study represents independent and rigorous science. The claims of the Task Force now seem increasingly suspect and I hope that policymakers will treat these studies with an appropriate degree of caution”.
The findings of the increasingly discredited research led the European Union to institute a two year temporary ban on the pesticides as it did further research on the impact on birds and insects. Farmers this year have been ravaged by the cabbage stem flea beetle, which has severely impacted crops after being left free to reproduce without control. This winter, 44,480 acres of crop has been lost to the pest which was previously managed with the use of pesticides.
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