7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2015
%HHUHVHDUFKHUWRXWVÀRZHUSRZHU Study: GMO labels don’t act as warnings
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
COUPEVILLE, Wash. —
Researcher Tim Lawrence has
been all around Washington state
testing bee hives for neonicoti-
noids, a class of pesticides banned
by the European Commission for
their purported harm to honey-
bees.
Neonicotinoids in pollen and
beeswax were almost non-exis-
tent in urban areas. More were
detected in agricultural areas, but
not enough to justify a ban, Law-
rence said.
The Washington State Univer-
sity researchers expect to publish
their ¿ndings soon in the -ournal
of Economic Entomology, adding
to the body of knowledge on an
emotional debate. So emotional,
it’s hindering an effective response
to honeybee losses, Lawrence
said. “I think the whole neonico-
tinoid issue is a huge, unnecessary
distraction when looking at what’s
necessary for bees.”
Neonicotinoids were intro-
duced in the 1990s as alternatives
to pesticides that were more harm-
ful to birds and mammals. Critics
say that because plants absorb ne-
onicotinoids, bees in turn pick up
the pesticide. The United King-
dom recently relaxed Europe’s
ban on neonicotinoids, sparking
an angry backlash.
Lawrence says the anger is
misplaced. To help bees, he stress-
es Àower power.
“We need to plant lots of Àow-
ers. I mean acres and acres of
Àowers,” he said.
Wrangled bees
Lawrence, 64, has been think-
ing about what bees need since
he was 12 years old. He saw bees
swarming a tree limb, cut it down
and carried it home to show his
mother and announce his career
plans.
As a young man, he wrangled
bees in California and hammed it
up by encouraging thousands of
swarming bees to form a “beard”
around his face. He also met his
future wife, Susan Cobey, another
young bee wrangler, who is now
By MATEUSZ
PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Washington State University research scientist Tim Lawrence
shows a bee hive July 30 in Coupeville on Whidbey Island.
a Washington State researcher
and an authority on honeybee
breeding.
Lawrence was a commercial
beekeeper who later moved into
academia, earning a Ph.D. in en-
vironmental science in his 50s at
Ohio Sate University.
He took a post-doctorate job in
Pullman as a bee researcher and
seven months later, in 2010, was
named director of the WSU Island
County Extension Of¿ce, where
he has continued his bee research.
Mites, lack of forage
bigger threats
Last year, he served on a hon-
eybee task force convened by the
Washington State Department of
Agriculture. The task force con-
cluded that parasitic varroa mites
and lack of forage are bigger
threats to honeybees than neonic-
otinoids.
The conclusion put the task
force in step with the U.S. De-
partment of Agriculture, but out of
step with European regulators and
some local governments, such as
Olympia, which have banned ne-
onicotinoids on public property.
Lawrence readily agrees that
spraying neonicotinoids in the
presence of bees is bad and that
there can be an over-reliance on
chemicals to control pests. He
doesn’t rule out the possibility
that evidence supporting bans will
come out and said that researchers
should continue looking for new
classes of pesticides easy on bees.
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But he’s unpersuaded that ban-
ning neonicotinoids is the answer
for what ails honeybees, a position
reinforced by his recent research.
Mark Emrich, president of the
Washington State Beekeepers As-
sociation, read a draft of the soon-
to-be-published paper. His hives
in Thurston County were tested,
and neonicotinoids were not
found. Nevertheless, he remains
concerned that widely used ne-
onicotinoids are damaging bees’
ability to function and maintain
healthy hives.
“I’m more concerned about
sub-lethal degradation of the bees
as opposed to the bees actually dy-
ing,” he said.
Emrich notes that other re-
search has concluded neonicoti-
noids are harming bees. “Nobody
has really given me a good synop-
sis on why all the stuff done be-
fore was wrong,” he said.
Lawrence recalls shoveling
piles of dead bees in the 1980s
killed by ill-timed pesticide ap-
plications before neonicotinoids
were introduced. The mass die-
offs of bees have stopped, he said.
“If they ban neonicotinoids, what
are they going to replace them
with? What are the consequences
of that?”
A new study concludes that
shoppers aren’t scared off by
labels on food containing genet-
ically modi¿ed organisms, but
labeling opponents are skeptical
of the ¿ndings.
The study by University of
Vermont economics professor
-ane Kolodinsky found that
support for mandatory GMO
labeling didn’t measurably cor-
respond with opposition to bio-
technology.
“A label doesn’t seem to
change people’s opinion of ge-
netic engineering,” she said.
The results were released at
a time when GMO labels are in
the public spotlight.
A proposal to ban state and
local governments from requir-
ing labels for GMOs is currently
pending in Congress and Ver-
mont’s labeling law is being
challenged before the 2nd U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals.
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for labeling
An average of 89 percent of
Vermont residents, who were
surveyed ¿ve times between
2003 and 2015 as part of the
study, favored mandatory GMO
labeling.
About 60 percent of survey
respondents said they opposed
GMOs being used in commer-
cial food products.
Among people who want
labeling, those without college
educations, those in single-par-
ent households and those with
the highest incomes tended not
to oppose GMOs.
Support for labeling tended
to increase GMO opposition
among men and people with
median incomes, but the overall
impact of backing labels was
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negligible to non-existent, the
study found.
Kolodinsky said she was
surprised by the results because
opponents claim that GMO la-
bels will act as warnings to con-
sumers and reduce consumption
of products containing biotech
ingredients.
Given the study’s ¿ndings,
however, such fears are un-
founded, she said.
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The Coalition for Safe and
Affordable Food, which rep-
resents food manufacturers and
farm groups opposed to GMO
labeling, believes the study
“conveniently overlooks” state-
ments by anti-GMO advocates
who tout labels as the ¿rst step
in convincing the public to
avoid biotech products.
The coalition pointed to a re-
cent survey by the Pew Research
Service that found the majority
of scientists view GMOs as safe
while the majority of the public
does not.
“This is the result of a cam-
paign of deception anti-GMO
activists have been waging for
years,” the coalition said in
statement. “A mandatory label
will only serve to deepen this
divide between perception and
reality.”
Liberal-leaning state
Somin also questioned
whether the survey sample was
representative of the U.S. as a
whole, since it was conducted in
a liberal-leaning state that tends
to be more skeptical of GMOs.
“Vermont is atypical in a
number of well-known ways,”
he said.
While some people who
support labels may not oppose
GMOs, the labeling movement
is generally embraced by peo-
ple who oppose biotechnology,
Somin said.
The Center for Food Safety,
a nonpro¿t group that’s critical
of GMOs, believes labels will
be useful for people who want
to avoid them without unneces-
sarily alarming consumers.
“It doesn’t come with an enor-
mous stigma for the industry,”
said Colin O’Neil, the group’s di-
rector of government affairs.
It’s more likely that food
manufacturers who have spent
millions of dollars ¿ghting
GMO label campaigns in sev-
eral states will cause fear of
GMOs, he said.
Such efforts reinforce the
idea that companies that rely
on biotech ingredients have
something to hide, O’Neil said.
“What are these companies so
afraid of?”
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