EFSA’s bias on bee decline and pesticides
EFSA has asked Helen Thompson from the British Food Agency to write a report on interactions between pesticides and other factors in effects on bees. Helen Thompson is well known to have been working closely with the pesticides industry and to systematically deny relevant studies pointing at pesticides to explain honeybees disappearance. The outcome of the report commissioned to Thompson cannot be a surprise for EFSA and it wasn’t: Thompson concluded that there is no field-study that can demonstrate that neonicotinoid insecticides are responsible for honeybee colony deaths and points at other factors than pesticides for the bee decline. PAN-Europe blames EFSA for attributing the contract to a person whose conflicts of interest are unacceptable and whose famous biased opinion is more than suspicious.