The Pesticide Industry’s Playbook for Poisoning the Earth – The Intercept

In September 2009, over 3,000 bee enthusiasts from around the world descended on the city of Montpellier in southern France for Apimondia a festive beekeeper conference filled with scientific lectures,hobbyist demonstrations, and commercial beekeepers hawking honey. But that year, a cloud loomed over the event: bee colonies across the globe were collapsing, and billions of bees were dying.

Bee declines have been observed throughout recorded history, but the sudden, persistent and abnormally high annual hive losses had gotten so bad that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had commissioned two of the worlds most well-known entomologists Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a chief apiary inspector in Pennsylvania, then studying at Penn State University, and Jeffrey Pettis, then working as a government scientist to study the mysterious decline. They posited that there must be an underlying factor weakening bees immune systems.

We exposed whole colonies to very low levels of neonicotinoids in this case, and then challenged bees from those colonies with Nosema, a pathogen, a gut pathogen, said Pettis, speaking to filmmaker Mark Daniels in his documentary,The Strange Disappearance of the Bees, at Apimondia. And we saw an increase, even if we fed the pesticide at very low levels an increase in Nosema levels in direct response to the low-level feeding of neonicotinoids.

The dosages of the pesticide were so miniscule, said vanEngelsdorp, that it was below the limit of detection. The only reason they knew the bees had consumed the neonicotinoids, he added, was because we exposed them.

Bee health depends on a variety of synergistic factors, the scientists were careful to note. But in this study, Pettis said, they were able to isolate one pesticide and one pathogen and we clearly see the interaction.

The evidence was mounting. Shortly after vanEngelsdorp and Pettis revealed their findings, a number of French researchers produced a nearly identical study, feeding minute amounts of the same pesticide to bees, along with a control group. The study produced results that echoed what the Americans had found.

Drifting clouds of neonicotinoid dust from planting operations caused a series of massive bee die-offs in northern Italy and the Baden-Wrttemberg region of Germany. Studies have shown neonicotinoids impaired bees ability to navigate and forage for food, weakened bee colonies, and made them prone to infestation by parasitic mites.

In 2013, the European Union called for a temporary suspension of the most commonly used neonicotinoid-based products on flowering plants, citing the danger posed to bees an effort that resulted in a permanent ban in 2018.

In the U.S., however, industry dug in, seeking not only to discredit the research but to castpesticide companies as a solution to the problem. Lobbying documents and emails, many of which were obtained through open records requests, show a sophisticated effort over the last decade by the pesticide industry to obstruct any effort to restrict the use of neonicotinoids. Bayer and Syngenta, the largest manufacturers of neonics, and Monsanto, one of the leading producers of seeds pretreated with neonics, cultivated ties with prominent academics, including vanEngelsdorp, and other scientists who had once called for a greater focus on the threat posed by pesticides.

Syngenta AGs headquarters in Basel, Switzerland, on Feb. 4, 2015.

Photo: Philipp Schmidli/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The companies also sought influence with beekeepers and regulators, and went to great lengths to shape public opinion. Pesticide firms launched new coalitions and seeded foundations with cash to focus on nonpesticide factors in pollinator decline.

Position the industry as an active promoter of bee health, and advance best management practices which emphasize bee safety, noted aninternal planning memo from CropLife America, the lobby group for the largest pesticide companies in America, including Bayer and Syngenta. The ultimate goal of the bee health project, the document noted, was to ensure that member companies maintained market access for neonic products and other systemic pesticides.

The planning memo, helmed in part by Syngenta regulatory official John Abbott, charts a variety of strategies for advancing the pesticide industrys interests, such as, Challenge EPA on the size and breadth of the pollinator testing program. CropLife America officials were also tapped to proactively shape the conversation in the new media realm with respect to pollinators and minimize negative association of crop protection products with effects on pollinators. The document, dated June 2014, calls for outreach to university researchers who could be independent validators.

The pesticide companies have used a variety of strategies to shift the public discourse.

Americas Heartland, a PBS series shown on affiliates throughout the country and underwritten by CropLife America, portrayed the pollinator declines as a mystery. One segment from early 2013 on the crisis made no mention of pesticides, with the host simply declaring that experts arent sure why bees and butterflies were disappearing.

Another segment,released in January2015, quickly mentions pesticides as one of many possible factors for honeybee deaths. A representative of the North American Bee Care Program, Becky Langer, appeared on the program to discuss the exotic pests that can affect the bees. The program does not mention Langers position as a spokesperson for Bayer focused on managing fallout from the bee controversy.

Michael Sanford, a spokesperson for PBS KVIE, which produces Americas Heartland, wrote in an email to The Intercept that consistent with strict PBS editorial standards and our own, sponsors of the show provided no editorial input.

Bayers advocacy, designed to position the firm as a leader in protecting bee health, included a roadshow around the country, in which Bayer officials handed out oversized ceremonial checks to local beekeepers and students. The firm hosts splashy websites touting its leadership in promoting bee health and sponsors a number of beekeeping associations.

Meanwhile, Bayer has financed a series of online advertisements that depict individuals who fear that its pesticide products harm nontarget insects as deranged conspiracy theorists.

Honeybees have captured almost all the attention for the dangers of neonics, but they are hardly the only species in decline because of the chemical.

Other forms of influence have been far more covert.

Communications staff with CropLife America compiled a list of terms to shape on search engine results, including neonicotinoid, pollinators, and neonics. One of the consulting firms tapped to coordinate the industrys outreach, Paradigm Communications, a subsidiary of the public relations giant Porter Novelli, helped lead the effort to shift how pesticide products were portrayed in search engine results.

A slide prepared by Paradigm Communications showcases its push to decoupleGoogle search results for bee decline with neonic pesticides.

The greatest public relations coup has been the push to reframe the debate around bee decline to focus only on the threat of Varroa mites, a parasite native to Asia that began spreading to the U.S. in the 1980s. The mite is known to rapidly infest bee hives and carry a range of infectious diseases.

CropLife America, among other groups backed by pesticide companies, has financed research and advocacy around the mite an effort designed to muddy the conversation around pesticide use. Meanwhile, research suggests the issues are interrelated; neonics make bees far more susceptible to mite infestations and attendant diseases.

Bayer even constructed a sculpture of the Varroa mite at its Bee Care Center in North Carolina and at its research center in Germany, hyping its role as the primary force fueling the decline of pollinators.

A model of honeybee with a Varroa mite on its back at Bayers Bee Care Center in Monheim am Rhein, Germany, on Nov. 19, 2013.

Photo: Joanna Nottebrock/The New York Times via Redux

The stunningly successful campaign has kept most neonic products in wide circulation in commercial agriculture as well as in home gardens. The result is a world awash in neonics and massive profits for companies such as Syngenta and Bayer, which now counts Monsanto as a subsidiary.

Millions of pounds of the chemical are applied to 140 commercial crops every year. In the U.S., nearly all field-planted corn and two-thirds of soybean use neonic-coated seeds. The chemical is found in soil samples from coast to coast, in waterways and in drinking water. Neonics, which are water soluble, have been detected in the American River in California, the River Waveney in England, tap water in Iowa City, and hundreds of other streams and rivers across the world. In Brazil last year, after President Jair Bolsonaros government approved dozens of new pesticides, the use of neonics caused the death of more than 500 million bees across the country.

In August, a study publishing in peer-reviewed journal PLOS One found that the American landscape has become 48 times more toxic to insects since the 1990s, a shift largely fueled by the rising application of neonics.

Honeybees have captured almost all the attention for the dangers of neonics, but they are hardly the only species in decline because of the chemical. Studies have tied neonics to the disappearance of native bees, butterflies, mayflies, dragonflies, amphipods, and a range of waterborne insects, as well as earthworms and other insect invertebrates. Several species of bumblebees in the U.S. and Europe are approaching extinction, a die-off researchers say is tied to the use of neonics and other pesticides.

In September, a study released in the academic journal Science revealed that migrating songbirds suffered immediate weight loss following the consumption of only one or two seeds treated with neonics. Previous research had linked disappearing insect life to dwindling food sources for birds in the Netherlands, but the Science study provided the evidence that bird species were directly affected by the chemical.

Another groundbreaking study published in NaturesScientific Reportsshowed that neonics are likely causing serious birth defects in white-tailed deer, the first time research has shown that the chemical compound could endanger large mammals.

Bees are the canary in the cornfield, said Lisa Archer,from Friends of the Earth. The science linking pesticides to the extinction crisis has grown.

Scientists are only now taking a closer look at the potential impact of neonics on humans and other mammals.

Bees are the canary in the cornfield, said Lisa Archer, the food and agriculture program director at Friends of the Earth. The science linking pesticides to the extinction crisis has grown.

Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, told The Intercept, I think perhaps we are reaching a tipping point where people finally begin to appreciate the importance of insects, the scale of their decline, and that blitzing the landscape with pesticides is not sustainable or desirable.

Bayer and Syngenta reject any claim that their neonic products are harming the environment.

Neonicotinoid products are critically important tools for farmers, and are approved for use in more than 100 countries due to their strong safety profile when used according to label, said Susan Luke, a spokesperson for Bayer Crop Science North America, in a statement to The Intercept. This is why Bayer continues to strongly support their continued safe use, even though the manufacture of neonic products is not a major part of our business.

Research claims that have been made questioning neonic safety all share common flaws, such as exposure levels that far exceed real-world scenarios, and the flawed idea that exposure to substances in the environment necessarily means harm,adds Luke. It does not, otherwise no one would go swimming in chlorine or drink caffeinated coffee.

Since neonicotinoids were introduced in the 1990s, honey bee colonies have been increasing in the United States, Europe, Canada and indeed around the world, Chris Tutino, a spokesperson for Syngenta, claimed in a statement to The Intercept. He added that most scientists and bee experts agree that bee health is affected by multiple factors, including parasites, diseases, habitat and nutrition, weather and hive management practices.

Tutino, in his email, noted that the neonic compound thiamethoxam, used in popular Syngenta products such as Cruiser and Dividend, had undergone extensive tests evaluating effects on pollinators, and provided links to five studies, all of which were produced by Syngenta consultants or employees.

Neither company responded directly to questions about the role of neonic products in fueling declines of butterflies, dragonflies, and other insect species beyond bee populations. Both companies highlighted company funding for honeybee health research.

The chemical industrys comments were disputed by Willa Childress, an organizer with Pesticide Action Network North America.While its true, Childress noted, that managed honeybee hive populations are growing, that is because of the commercial value of honeybees in pollinating a vast array of American agriculture. Beekeepers on average now lose around40-50 percent of hives every year, wellup from historical averages of10 percent. Many commercial beekeepers are forced to constantly divide hives and buy queens to maintain hive populations, with many relying on government subsidies to scrape by.So no, honeybees arent doing better than ever, said Childress. And the scientists do agree that multiple interacting factors are driving pollinator decline, including, as chemical companies neglect to mention, pesticide use.Honeybees will not go extinct in our lifetimes, noted Childress. But, she added, data on native bees and wild pollinators is far more apocalyptic than even the most concerning reports on honey bee losses. Unprecedented numbers of wild pollinators are facing extinction and we have very limited data on a number of other pollinators that are at risk.

Not long ago, action in the U.S. to restrict neonics seemed imminent.

The pressure began to build in 2010 after Tom Theobald, a beekeeper in Boulder, Colorado, obtained an internal Environmental Protection Agency report showing that the agencys own scientists had sharply criticized the research used to permit the sale of one of the most popular lines of neonic products.

In 2003, Bayer had secured the temporary right to use clothianidin, a neonic used widely for corn and canola, from the EPA under the condition that the company conduct a chronic life cycle study showing how use of the neonic would affect honeybees by the end of the following year.

The Bayer-funded study, led by Cynthia Scott-Dupree, an environmental sciences professor at the University of Guelph in Ontario, placed hives in clothianidin-treated fields of canola and hives in untreated fields of canola. The tests found little variation between the two sets of hives, but researchers later pointed out that the hives in the study were placed only 968 feet apart from one another. Honeybees forage for pollen up to six miles from their hives.

Scott-Dupree was later appointed the Bayer CropScience Chair in Sustainable Pest Management at the University of Guelph. Regulators in Canada and at the EPA used the study to clear clothianidin for unconditional use. Internally, however, EPA scientists expressed concerns.

The memo, written by two EPA scientists, noted that the previous Bayer-funded study failed baseline guidelines for pesticide research and warned that clothianidin posed a major risk concern to nontarget insects (that is, honey bees).

A dizzying array of research began pointing to problems with neonics. Despite claims that the compound represents a form of precision agriculture, a growing body of research shows that the chemical strays far from targetedcrops, often traveling with the wind during planting operations, remaining in the soil for long periods of time, leaching into waterways, and causing acute problems for a wide variety of insect and animal life.

In 2014, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, introduced legislation to compel the EPA to take steps to suspend the pesticides. That year, in response to growing controversies around bee decline and the demands for greater accountability over loosely regulated pesticide use, President Barack Obama issued an executive memorandum calling attention to the significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies.

Activists picketed the White House demanding action. Beekeepers and environmentalist groups filed lawsuits challenging the registration status of major neonic products, claiming that EPA had violated its own protocols when licensing products from Bayer and Syngenta. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a decision to phase out neonics in wildlife refuge areas in the Pacific region.

Around the country, legislators in states across the country proposed bills to restrict neonics. In Minnesota, a bill was signed into law to prevent nurseries from marketing plants as pollinator-friendly if they had been treated with neonics.

For a while, the movement seemed to be gaining traction, which some hoped would lead the U.S. to mirror the EU in moving to regulate the widely used insecticide.

In the end, little changed. The settlements related to the lawsuits removed small-market neonics. The private-public partnerships that grew out of the Obama memorandum lacked any enforcement mechanism to restrict neonic use in agriculture. President Donald Trump rescinded the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule. Minnesota legislators quickly repealed the labeling requirement a year after it was passed.

Aftera hearing in which he pointed to pesticides, Jeffrey Pettistoldthe Washington Post that hewas criticized him for failing to follow the script.

In almost every other state, with the exception of Vermont, Connecticut, and Maryland, lobbyists from the pesticideand agribusiness industrysuccessfully killed any significant restriction on neonic products. The scientific community, once focused on studying the impact of pesticides, became splintered, with many of the leading voices going to work for industry or industry-backed nonprofits.

Critics of neonics were quickly sidelined. In April 2014, the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture then chaired by Rep. Austin Scott, a Georgia Republican convened a hearing to discuss the pollinator crisis. The event featured David Fischer, a Bayer official, and Jeff Stone, lobbyist for commercial nurseries. Both men used the hearing to warn against any restrictionson neonics in response to bee decline. The third, Dan Cummings, a representative of the Almond Board, a trade group for almond growers, focused on the threat of the Varroa mite.

A fourth witness, the Department of Agriculture researcher Jeffrey Pettis thescientist who had collaborated with vanEngelsdorp noted that unlike traditional pesticides, neonics are found in pollen, increasing exposure to bees. Under questioning from Scott, the committee chair, Pettis reiterated that even without mites, bees would still be in decline, and pesticides raise concern to a new level.

After the hearing, Pettis told the Washington Post that he spoke privately with Scott, who criticized him for failing to follow the script.

CropLife America, notably, celebrated the hearing performance for its heavy focus on nonpesticide-related factors for bee decline. One thing that we hope was made clear during the hearing was the crop protection industrys commitment to addressing this issue, Jay Vroom, then the president of CropLife America, said in astatement.

Campaign finance records show that CropLife America, just weeks after the hearing, gave$3,500 to Scott, who then sponsored legislation to solve the bee crisis through exemptions to expedite the approval of pesticides used to control the Varroa mite.

And two months after the hearing, according to the Post, Pettis was demoted, losing his role managing the USDA bee lab in Beltsville, Maryland. Pettis later left the government and now serves as president of Apimondia.

Entomologist Jonathan Lundgren, who is researching answers for what might be causing the dwindling honeybee population, on Jan. 9, 2016.Photos: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images

The Post also details the story of a prominent USDA scientist, Jonathan Lundgren, who researched the dangers posed by neonics to pollinators and spoke publicly about the issue. In 2015, Lundgren suddenly faced suspensions and an internal government investigation over misconduct, a push he believes was motivated by industry for his role in speaking out on pesticides.

I guess I started asking the wrong questions, pursuing risk assessments of neonicotinoids on a lot of different field crop seeds used throughout the U.S. and how they were affecting non-target species like pollinators, Lundgren told The Intercept.

The USDA did not respond to The Intercepts request for comment. It told the Post that the suspensions had nothing to do with his research. They were for conduct unbecoming a federal employee and violating travel regulations.

Lundgren now runs Blue Dasher Farm in South Dakota, a research effort to develop ways to rotate diverse sets of crops as a way to increase yields and suppress pests naturally. There are few institutions, he noted, where researchers can pursue science independent of industry influence. Universities have become dependent on extramural funds, entire programs are bankrolled by these pesticide companies, chemical companies,headded.

The regulatory system in the U.S. assumes chemical products are generally safe until proven hazardous.

Generally, we see the U.S. waiting longer than the EU to take action on a variety of pesticides and other chemicals,said Childress,the organizer with Pesticide Action Network North America. Part of the divergence, Childress continued, stems from a regulatory system in the U.S. that assumes chemical products are generally safe until proven hazardous. In contrast, the EU tends to use the precautionary principle, removing products that may cause harm, and requiring proof of safety before allowing them to return to market.

Another major factor, Childress noted, is the widespread corporate capture of American regulatory institutions. The EPA, for instance, employs 11 former lobbyists including its administrator, Andrew Wheeler, who previously worked for coal interests in opposition to climate regulationsin senior positions.

The pesticide industry also maintains a long history of underhanded methods to discredit its critics.

Monsanto deployed aggressive tactics to punish critics of Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world and the companys marquee product over the last several decades. Emails released through ongoing litigation in California last year showed that the firm used its lobbyists to orchestrate a campaignin Congress to criticize and defund scientists with the World Health Organizations cancer research affiliate, after that body had declared that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is a probable carcinogen. Many of the documents detailing Monsantos role in shaping the public discourse around glyphosate were released during the course of class-action lawsuits filed by cancer victims whoblame the company for their illnesses.

Syngenta became infamous after its tactics against University of California, Berkeley Professor Tyrone Hayes were reported. Hayess research showed that the companys signature herbicide, atrazine, appeared to disrupt the sexual development of frogs.

The company dispatched people to follow and record Hayes at public speaking events, commissioned a psychological profile of the professor, and worked with a variety of writers to smear Hayes as non-credible and a liability to academics who considered working with him. The effort to sideline Hayes and his research, which included coordination with industry-friendly academics, was revealed in a series of court documents that were disclosed over litigation involving claims that Syngenta had polluted local water sources with atrazine.

In the two lawsuits against Syngenta and Monsanto, subpoenaed documents revealed that both Syngenta and Monsanto maintain a list of third party stakeholders, including free market think tanks and scientists the industry could turn to for messaging support.

Many of the think tanks and individuals included in the roster now play a prominent role in the neonic debate. The American Council on Health and Science, which has relied on corporate funding from Monsanto, Bayer, and Syngenta, has published overa dozen articles disputing the dangers posed by neonics.

In one email revealed through the Monsanto-Roundup litigation, Daniel Goldstein, a Monsanto official, wrote to colleagues in all-caps to support the councils work: I can assure you I am not all starry eyed about ACSH- they have PLENTY of warts- but: You WILL NOT GET A BETTER VALUE FOR YOUR DOLLAR than ACSH. The bottom of the email included hyperlinks to articles criticizing demands to regulate both glyphosate and neonic pesticides.

The Heartland Institute, one of the think tanks in Syngentas third-party stakeholder list, which has received Bayer donations in the past, has published articles deriding research critical of neonics as junk science.

The pesticide industry is using Big Tobaccos PR tactics to try and spin the science about their products links to bee declines and delay action while they keep profiting, said Archer, whose group, Friends of the Earth, has documented the lobbying tactics of pesticide makers.

When neonics hit the market three decades ago, they were the first new class of insecticide invented in nearly 50 years, and their use skyrocketed.

As early as the late 17th century, farmers found that they could grind tobacco plants and use nicotine extract to kill beetles on crops. Nicotine acts as an organic insecticide, binding to nerve receptors and causing paralysis and death in aphids, white flies, and other plant-eating insects.

Attempts to use nicotine for a mass-market pesticide, however, frustrated scientists. In early research, sunlight diluted the effectiveness of nicotine-based products. But that changed just over three decades ago, when Bayer scientists at Nihon Bayer Agrochem, the firms Japanese subsidiary,first synthesized neonicotinoids in the 1980s a compound that not only withstood heat and sunlight, but could be applied to the root or seed of a plant and remain effective for that plants entire lifespan.

Neonics were hailed as the Goldilocks compound because they are not too hard, not too soft, but just right.

The new chemical came just in time. Farmers and regulators were seeking alternatives to another class of pesticides organophosphates, nerve agents sprayed on crops that had been found to cause cancer in humans. Initial studies of neonics showed that the compound was acutely toxic to insects but unlikely to cause harm to mammals.

As one scientist for Bayer described the invention in a 1993 Science magazine article hailing the introduction of the new class of chemicals, neonics were the Goldilocks compound because they are not too hard, not too soft, but just right.

And because seeds could be pretreated with neonics, which were absorbed and expressed through the tissue, nectar, and pollen, they could be also produced on an industrial scale, providing agriculture crops with an efficient insect-killing capability without the need for expensive spray treatments or constant reapplication.

In other words, farmers could soak the ground and seeds with enormous amounts of the compound to avoid problems from pests in the future. The delivery mechanism saved money for farmers but set the conditions for chronic overuse of the pesticides.

Estimated agricultural use of imidacloprid. Information compiled from the U.S. Geological Surveys Pesticide National Synthesis Project.

Map: USGS National Water-Quality Assessment, The Intercept

The first commercial neonic, imidacloprid, was registered with the EPA in 1994 and sold as a potato seed treatment. Business boomed as neonic products spread worldwide to Japan, France, Germany, and South Africa. In the U.S., it became a popular standard seed and root treatment for corn, cotton, soybeans, almonds, and a range of fruits and vegetables.

Neonics were even used for household applications. Bayer produced imidacloprid as a flea treatment on pets throughout the U.S. The Advantage line of flea control took off, with a marketing campaign featuring the Jack Russell terrier Eddie from the television show Frasier and a 30-foot inflatable flea in Times Square.

Chemical Week called the introduction of neonics a renaissance for the U.S. insecticides industry providing environmentally friendly products. The Columbus Dispatch, in an article for home gardeners about ways to deliver a surgical strike against pests, called for consumers to consider Bayers Merit soil treatment, which the paper called virtually non-toxic.

The swift adoption of the compound instantly made Bayer, which had previously profited largely from its pharmaceutical line of products, a worldwide player in the agrochemical industry.

Imidacloprid is our most important product,the head of Bayers pesticide division told investors in 2008.

In 2003, at a forum hosted by Goldman Sachs, Bayer listed Confidor, Premise, and Gaucho, several seed treatments based on neonic compounds, among its top-performing products in a presentation outlining the companys performance metrics. Another investor presentation, given by Bayer executives in Lyon, France, projected rapid growth from the neonic products, estimating that the firm, which had sales of close to 400 million euros from the portfolio in 1998, would more than double to 850 million euros by 2010.

Imidacloprid is our most important product, Friedrich Berschauer, then-head of Bayers pesticide division, told investors during a conference call in 2008, according to a transcript of his remarks. Company disclosures underscore Berschauers remarks: During that fiscal year, the company reported 932 million euros in sales for its top two neonic compounds.

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The Pesticide Industry's Playbook for Poisoning the Earth - The Intercept