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Title: Another Reason to Eat Organic... Bees and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) Post by: Sheryl on Saturday 15 December, 2007 Studies have shown that in the USA from 2006 that up to 70% of commercial bees are gone. No one is quite sure why... possible explanations given are exposure to GMO, pesticides, cell phones, a virus and mites. Bees are responsible for the pollination of 5 BILLION dollars of the fresh food industry in the USA so this problem could mean huge financial losses.
Interesting to note is that the organic bees have not been effected by CCD. They are doing just fine. So comes the question.. if we are seeing this in bees what's happening to people eating these crops? Piers also raised this, given that spraying chemicals and GMO are very recent inventions on the part of humanity (since world war 2) why are these crops called "standard/conventional" and organic seen as a new and untested way of growing food? Organic IS conventional and modern sprayed food is experimental. Title: Re: Another Reason to Eat Organic... Bees and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) Post by: Rawo on Saturday 15 December, 2007 I guess the difference between us and insects in regards to pesticides and GM crops is that it takes longer to kill us, then them. By the time they discover anything is wrong, it is filled with too many other tangibles to work out what it actually was.
Maybe bees are like the canaries in underground mines. They tell us before we know ourselves. The worldwide experiment. That is true... organics should be "conventional" not government funded pesticide sprayed food. We've had "organic" farming for a couple of thousand years after all. Also apart from the monetary loses, it also means that all that food that doesn't get pollinated is less food available to eat. It's funny, they have found that if there are two crops next to eachother, and one is GM and one is not, the animals will only touch the non-GM crops. The animals must know something we do not eh. I'm sure the famers who have GM crops aren't complaining though. They have also found, that if you give an animal the choice between organic or non-organic, they will usually choose the organic option. I'll have what the animals have thanks. When we mess with nature, she bites us back really hard. Respect.... xx K Title: Re: Another Reason to Eat Organic... Bees and Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) Post by: FreedomB on Saturday 22 December, 2007 That's shocking! I saw 'Bee Movie' ths morning; it wasn't as funny as I was expecting (I'm a HUGE Jerry Seinfeld fan!) but the message was blatantly obvious that farming honey is cruel and is nothing more than petty stealing. I hope that gets through to all the kids who watch it!
But what happened in the movie, was that they returned all the honey that had already been taken, so the bees didn't need to make more... they didn't pollinate anything... everything died. Bees are very important! :ohyeah: |