Beleid en debat

Staatssecretaris Co Verdaas van Economische Zaken (PvdA) treedt af vanwege het onterecht declareren van een grote hoeveelheid autoritten toen hij provinciebestuurder in Gelderland was. Dat bevestigde hij zojuist op een persconferentie. Verdaas was van 30 januari 2003 tot 30 november 2006 Tweede Kamerlid voor de PvdA. De afgelopen vijf jaar was hij gedeputeerde van Gelderland, belast met ruimtelijke ordening. De 46-jarige Verdaas woonde in Zwolle, maar moest in Gelderland gaan wonen toen hij daar in april 2007 provinciebestuurder werd. Volgens Gedeputeerde Staten kocht Verdaas kort na zijn aanstelling een pand in Nijmegen, waar hij op papier vanaf dat moment woonde. Maar volgens een Statenlid in Gelderland declareerde Verdaas tot medio 2011 honderden ritten tussen Arnhem en Zwolle, waar hij dus stiekem bleef wonen. In drie jaar tijd zou hij 382 keer door een chauffeur met een dienstauto zijn opgehaald en even zo vele keren thuisgebracht. De ritjes van en naar Zwolle kostten zo’n 30.000 euro, schreef de Volkskrant eind november.

Representatives from Syngenta and Bayer CropScience were questioned by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee last week as it seeks to establish whether the UK should follow other European countries in banning or restricting neonicotinoid insecticides. But Syngenta, which makes the systemic insecticide Thiamethoxam, is unhappy at the committee's approach. Head of public affairs Luke Gibbs told Grower it had been established to consider a single variable - the action of insecticides on pollinating insects - when the problem of pollinator decline is "multi-variable", he said. "They will only look at a narrow range of scientific papers. But the real threats to bees are the Varroa mite and habitat loss. Focusing only on pesticides could lead to recommendations that are not balanced." Gibbs added that the inquiry "has inevitably attracted groups that are ideologically opposed to pesticide use", and he noted: "Several of the committee, such as Caroline Lucas, Zac Goldsmith and Martin Caton, have a long-stated public position on this."

In Croatia, imidacloprid is increasingly used in olive growing areas against the olive fruit fly. Experiments were conducted to examine the relationship between soil properties, imidacloprid concentration and soil sorption capacity. The linear and the Freundlich model adequately described the imidacloprid sorption. Better sorption was observed at lower imidacloprid concentrations and in soils with higher organic carbon and clay content, but organic carbon content was predominant factor influencing sorption. Thus, for soils with lower sorption capacity a greater potential mobility of imidacloprid in the soil profile is expected, indicating a need for regular monitoring and strategy development against groundwater pollution.

The contemporary interpretation of Paracelsus's famous declaration “the dose makes the poison”, for which he is often called the father of toxicology, is that dose and effect move together in a predictably linear fashion, and that lower exposures to a hazardous compound will therefore always generate lower risks. This idea is not just a philosophical abstraction; it is the core assumption underlying the system of chemical-safety testing that arose in the mid-twentieth century. Risk assessors typically look for adverse effects of a compound over a range of high doses and, from there, extrapolate downwards to establish health standards — always assuming, like Paracelsus, that chemicals toxic at high doses are much less risky at lower, real-world levels. But what if the Paracelsian presumption is wrong? On the basis of conventional high-dose testing, regulators have set maximum acceptable levels for each of them that assume all doses below that level are safe. But academic researchers who have studied a wider range of doses, including very low ones found in the everyday environment, say that their experiments usually do not generate the tidy, familiar 'ski-slope' dose-response graphs of classic toxicology.

The FOrum for the Co-ordination of pesticide fate models and their USe
(FOCUS) exposure models are used to predict the frequency and magnitude of pesticide surface water concentrations within the European regulatory risk assessment. The predictions are based on realistic worst-case assumptions that result in predicted environmental concentrations (PEC). Here, we compared for the first time a larger data set of 122 measured field concentrations (MFC) of agricultural insecticides extracted from 22 field studies to respective PECs by using FOCUS steps 1−4. While FOCUS step 1 and 2 PECs generally overpredicted the MFCs, 23% of step 3 and 31% of step 4 standard PECs were exceeded by surface water MFCs, which questions the protectiveness of the FOCUS exposure assessment. Using realistic input parameters, step 3 simulations underpredicted MFCs in surface water and sediment by 43% and 78%, respectively, which indicate that a higher degree of realism even reduces the protectiveness of model results. The ratios between PEC and MFC in surface water were significantly lower for pyrethroids than for organophosphorus or organochlorine insecticides, which suggests that the FOCUS predictions are less protective for hydrophobic insecticides. In conclusion, the FOCUS modeling approach is not protective for insecticide concentrations in the field.

Of all European countries, the Netherlands has the greatest bee mortality. Conservationists are very concerned about the impact this has on our food chain. Most independent scientists and beekeepers from all over the world regard pesticides as the main cause of bee-mortality. But the pesticide companies deny any causal link. In the Netherlands, the government's chief advisers in this field, from Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR), deny absolutely that pesticides are a major cause of bee mortality.
This film reveals that their judgement is affected by the massive funding that the University receives from pesticide manufacturers. Because of the vast financial interests at stake, the connection between the death of the bees and the use of pesticides is a very sensitive political issue at The Hague. Can the honeybees be saved? This video documentary by Holland's famous Zembla TV Channel explores the murky world of pesticide politics. http://omroep.vara.nl/media/175032

Als Europa het Gemeenschappelijk Landbouwbeleid (GLB) niet bijstuurt, dan krijgen we nauwelijks een bijsturing naar een meer duurzame landbouw en platteland. Dit landbouwbeleid gaf ons vooral steeds grotere stallen en monoculturen, die erg afhankelijk zijn van externe input zoals buitenlandse veevoeders, kunstmest, chemische pesticiden, groot landbouwmaterieel en dus ook risicovolle bankleningen. Wie is hier de dupe van? Iedereen. Wij boeren hebben het steeds moeilijker om de eindjes aan elkaar te knopen. Het milieu staat ook onder druk met verarmde gronden en vervuild water. Landbouwdieren zitten zonder daglicht op elkaar gestapeld. De consument krijgt eten op zijn bord dat residuen kan bevatten van chemische pesticiden of antibiotica. Een eentonig platteland krijgen we, met weinig koeien, laat staan varkens in de wei en te weinig levensnoodzakelijke bijen. Wie wil dit?