This page is a part of the corpus (Annexe 1) used to write Stéphane Foucart and neonicotinoids.
Here, I relate what the journalist said in his article “Avec ou sans floraison, les néonicotinoïdes représentent des risques pour les pollinisateurs”. All quotes, originally in French, were translated by me.
Maize growers also want to be able to derogate from the NNI ban. The success of beet growers in obtaining this derogation was based on the argument that sugar beet is harvested before flowering. “Put into circulation by agro-industry circles and taken up by the Ministry of Agriculture in its communication, this argument has been widely echoed on social media by elected officials and political leaders.”
Yet much scientific work, taken up by EFSA in its 2018 expertise, has reportedly shown that NNIs pose a high risk to pollinators, even without pollination. They can be affected
- through guttation (Girolami et al. 2009);
- by dust released during sowing (Greatti et al. 2003);
- by NNIs that would remain in the soil, which may account for 80–98% of the dose (Sur and Stork, 2003).
S. Foucart also recalls the study object of the article of November 27, 2019 (60), observing that “untreated rapeseed, growing on plots free of neonics for five years, could be impregnated with these products“. And this at levels that pose a risk to pollinators. He also recalled the study of 169 plots in Switzerland, which was the subject of the August 27, 2019 article (55). (Humann-Guilleminot et al. 2019) Finally, he recalls that NNIs are toxic at tiny doses: 60 g of imidacloprid per hectare out of 423,000 hectares of beets would be 25 tonnes of produce, enough to kill 3 billion bees.