Louisa Enright's Blog

Interesting Information:  February 4, 2015

Shedding Light on Three Big Lies About Systemic Pesticides and Bees

So, first of all, who’s lying?

An industry shill, of course.

Does this work?  Yep.

You might want to go back to my Tipping Points 7 Essay about raw milk lies, as it details just how effective industry can be when promoting lies.  Back in 1945, when the developing milk industry was trying to eliminate competition, they hired a writer to create stories about an “epidemic” of undulent fever, said to be caused by drinking raw milk.  The writer even made up a fake town where the “epidemic” was said to occur.  And sixty years later, when I started drinking raw milk in Maine (and loving it), my mother, then in her 80s, raised the undulent fever risk.  She had stopped drinking raw milk, a victim of the scare tactics of industry.  One of my fondest memories of her when I was a child was her standing on the back porch of my grandmother’s home, her long legs bare in the heat, her wild black hair curling every which way, as she dipped a steel ladle into the tall silver can of milk that had just come from the farm, pouring the milk into a glass, and drinking it all down in long, delicious swallows.  She used to drink buttermilk like that, too.  And clabber, or soured milk, was one of her favorite things to drink back in those “old days.”

Industries lie all the time.

And they do get away with it.

Here’s a really, really good debunking of industry lies about pesticides and bees.  I’m assuming you know that if we lose the bees, we lose an enormous amount of the food we so take for granted.

(Thanks Beedy Parker for sending this article along.)

One tactic industry uses was learned from the cigarette industry–and I have Tipping Points essays on that topic as well.  By claiming “the science isn’t clear,” when it is really clear even though objective scientists are being fired and demonized, industry can keep the issue unresolved–while they continue to make tons of money.  Neonics are extraordinarily toxic.  Period.

Do take a moment and read this very interesting article.

Shedding Light on Three Big Lies About Systemic Pesticides and Bees.