U.K. Advisers Advocate For Neonicotinoid Ban

The U.K.’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs should ban the use of three neonicotinoid pesticides—imidacloprid, clothianidin, and thiamethoxam—by 2014 because of their potential to harm honeybees and other insect pollinators, an advisory committee of the U.K.’s Parliament concludes in a report released on April 5. The committee also recommends that the department establish a monitoring program to generate population data for numerous pollinator species so that levels of decline can be accurately determined. Although the science linking the three pesticides to pollinator declines is incomplete, the weight of the evidence supports precautionary action, the committee says. Syngenta and Bayer CropScience, which manufacture the pesticides, claim that mitigation measures to reduce exposure of pollinators to the pesticides would be more beneficial than banning the chemicals.