They need a win. Claims that bees are dying off have been met with a resounding thud, we have more bees than at any time since records have been kept. Concerns about GMOs have fared as poorly. Trillions of animals have been fed using GMOs and neither any of them or the billions of people who ate food grown using them have gotten so much as a stomachache. Food activism likes to gloss over how often organic lettuce gives consumers E. coli.
Fewer pesticides should be a good thing to environmental groups, but instead of cheering that the dream of Rachel Carson, considered the beacon of the anti-pesticide movement, is being realized they continue to find new ways to claim we are doomed. Most recently, they claim insects 'behave' differently due to 'off-target' effects, which is the 'endocrine disruptor' mysticism of the insect world. It has no meaning, so you can't tell the lawyers funding these campaigns they are wrong.(1)
Scientists would be very interested to see evidence of real harmful effects but instead the public have been pillaged by decades of bad epidemiology, the kind of stuff that correlated chocolate to better health and BPA in Manwich cans to lower IQ in children. Nonsense fabricated using statistical gimmicks wrapped in a bow of "significance."
It is anti-science populism aimed at the SEO experts in corporate newspapers who tell editors what journalists should write about. Not science.
A recent paper stretched the boundaries of credibility by claiming Glanville fritillary butterfly reproduction was impacted by a weedkiller (glyphosate, of course, Glyphomax made by Corteva) and an azoxystrobin and difenoconazole-based fungicide (Amistar Gold, by Syngenta) but in reading it you will be alarmed by their methodology. If you believe a weedkiller turned frogs 'gay', as a Berkeley Professor claimed for environmentalists over 20 years ago(2), then this is for you, but if you have any critical thinking you see what happened instead.
They quite literally painted Plantago lanceolata leaves with the chemicals. Why? Are they ancient Shamen who need plants to feel better during a tummy ache? Perhaps they believe English plantain is an indicator plant for Finnish butterflies. They then stuck the leaves dunked in chemicals in with butterfly larvae. They wrote that they were unable to effectively create consistent controls for how much was painted on the leaves, which again makes the science community wonder if they are incompetent or they handed it over to their elementary school nephew for that part.
Unsurprisingly, they declared that larvae had much lower life expectancy unless, bizarrely, they were exposed to both the weedkiller and the fungicide. So much for the "chemical cocktail" activists invoke most of the time. With even less conviction, they declared they reproduced worse.
Even more bizarrely, they didn't include any organic™ weedkillers like glyphosate. Maybe they think all Finnish organic farmers yell at pests the way environmentalists encourage.
Crop protection technologies already go through far more rigorous testing than other chemicals, and are much better studied than the certified organic stuff that gets used in their place. Suggesting that off-target effects must include every possible combination with every other possible chemical and include the impact of 'residue' at homeopathic levels would insure that no products every get approved.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., would approve, the way all wealthy progressives think food is that easy to grow, but as Sri Lanka showed the world when they tried to ban modern products, food riots and government overthrow are always only a week away.
NOTES:
(1) They instead spend $3 billion dollars to promote belief in old chemicals that are less effective and require far more intensive environmental strain per calorie. So much more that under pressure from Big Organic™ lobbying groups, California, the only U.S. state to record certified organic™ pesticides like copper sulfate, stopped itemizing it the way they do modern products. The last data recorded showed some organic foods used up to 600% more pesticides per calorie.
(2) It is unlikely that the gay community would put up with such breezy insults by "cock-fixated megalomaniac" Tyrone Hayes of Berkeley today but back then Pesticide Action Network sent him on all expenses paid junkets to give talks to elementary school kids about his claims. EPA could find no evidence that he was correct. He refused to send them his data, claiming they were part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy against him, and as I revealed in the Wall Street Journal, his findings never went through peer review. After I exposed in America's premier newspaper that a personal friend of his had walked his claims to publication, PNAS ended the ability of Academy members to do that.
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