A decree project aims to reautorize in 2023 the use of seeds of sugar beets treated with neonicotinoids, these insecticides nicknamed the “bee killers”.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
Insecticides accused of killing bees are preparing to return to the fields of sugar beets for the third, and last year, year? The government made public, Tuesday, January 3, a project of decree again authorizing for the 2023 campaign the use of seeds of sugar beets treated with neonicotinoids, harmful insecticides for bees, arousing the opposition of defenders of the environment.
This text, published on the website of the Ministry of Agriculture, is put to consultation with the public until January 24. He will then have to be the subject of a Favorable opinion of the Neonicotinoid Supervisory Board before being signed by the government, probably in early February. “The 2023 Betteravière campaign is the last campaign for which a decree derogating from the ban on the use of products containing active substances from the neonicotinoid family is likely to be adopted,” said the Ministry of Agriculture.
At the end of 2020, the Parliament had authorized the temporary return of these insecticides, which contribute to the massive decline of bee colonies and prohibited since 2018, to fly to the aid of the beet sector whose yields had been drastically reduced by the jaundice . The law specified that the derogations could not be granted, until July 2023, only for the seeds of sugar beet.
In December, the Minister of Agriculture, Marc Fesneau, said he was favorable to a new exemption, after those of 2021 and 2022, “to effectively fight” against the proliferation of green aphids, bearers of the jaundice of Beet, “awaiting alternative solutions”.
The draft decree authorizes under the 2023 campaign, and for a period of one hundred and twenty days, the use of seeds of sugar beets treated with imidaclopride or thiamethoxam (neonicotinoids). The decree is accompanied by restrictions on crops that can be sown in the following years on these surfaces, in order to reduce the exposure of pollinating insects to possible residues of these products.
Pressure of the disease “Good lesser that in 2020 and 2021 “
The NGO Générations Futures immediately opposed this new project, believing that the information available showed pressure from the disease “much less than in 2020 and 2021”. “We should both have a strong virus reservoir and a high pressure of aphids” to justify a new exemption, according to a press release from the association.
“Today, the scientific information we have in no way justify the request for a new derogation”, affirms in un communiqué François Veillerette, porte-parole de Générations futures.
The government recalls that a national research and innovation plan (PNRI) – entitled “Towards operational solutions against the jaundice of the sugar beet” – was launched in spring 2021 to find alternative solutions to neonicotinoids, But that the authorities of this PNRI consider that there are not yet solutions “deployable on the scale of the whole” of beet cultures, “even if certain tracks are promising”.