IRS: Tax day without coffee?
by Tiffany Finck-Haynes, food futures campaigner
Yesterday, Green America Business Council, Green America Business Network, coffee companies, Center for Food Safety and Friends of the Earth gathered in front of the IRS with signs, flyers and impassioned speeches to call on the agency to go one day without coffee — which benefits from pollination — to create urgency about a future without pollinators.
The EPA’s April 14 deadline for comment for its risk assessment on the bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticide imidacloprid — a leading driver of bee and pollinator deaths — coincides with the IRS’ busiest tax week of the year. If we lose our pollinators, the IRS and tax accountants around the country might find it very challenging to meet the demands of this busy season.
Businesses, including coffee companies would suffer if we lose our pollinators. They play a critical role in our agricultural economy and food supply — contributing nearly $29 billion to the U.S. economy and more than $217 billion to the world economy. Unfortunately, many invertebrate pollinator species including bees and butterflies are on the brink of extinction. The impact? Between $235 and $577 billion in global crops could be affected each year including coffee, chocolate and apples.
A growing body of science links pollinator decline to pesticides, including neonicotinoid pesticides. The neonicotinoid imidacloprid is one of the most widely used insecticides in the world, manufactured by Bayer and Syngenta. Neonicotinoids are particularly harmful because they are toxic to bees, long-lived and systemic — meaning they move through the plant and are in the pollen. Plus they are widely used both in agriculture and around the home.
The IRS does an essential job in our society that helps pay and support our schools, our roads and our way of life in America. Imagine if the agency didn’t have all of the tools it needed, including employees having access to a jolt of caffeine, especially during tax season, to perform these essential duties.
The EPA must act! While IRS employees look for companies who abuse tax loopholes, the EPA has too many pesticide loopholes and is giving too many breaks to the pesticide industry. The EPA’s conditional registration loophole allows pesticide companies to sell a pesticide for an unspecified period of time, before the pesticide is fully tested for toxicity and before the EPA gets safety data. Pesticide companies used this loophole to slip many neonicotinoid pesticides on the market.
This loophole system is flawed. It started in 1978 and based on the EPA’s own analysis of the program, from 2004–2010 this process was used in 98 percent of cases. About 65 percent of 16,000 currently registered pesticide products have been rushed to market using this loophole.
In addition to pesticide products, the EPA has another loophole — it allows pesticide-coated seeds on the market without regulating them as a pesticide application. This loophole is abused. Neonicotinoids are used as seed treatments and coat more than 140 crops, including virtually all corn, 90 percent of canola, and half of the soybean seeds planted in the U.S. In the past 11 years, Penn State found soybean and corn pesticide-coated seeds rapidly expanded. Pesticide-coated soybean acres jumped from 5 percent to more than 30 percent and pesticide-coated corn acres jumped from 30 percent to at least 79 percent.
The pesticide industry claims these coated seeds provide much needed “crop insurance” for farmers and are teaming up to expand this market. Industry moguls such as Monsanto and Bayer joined forces on coated seeds and, Syngenta and Dupont sell coated soybean seeds too.
A preponderance of evidence proves these coated seeds are harming pollinators including bees, butterflies and birds. Just one seed coated in neonicotinoids is enough to kill a songbird. Further, studies prove these seed treatments do not increase crop yields.
In 2014, the EPA released its own study concluding neonicotinoid-coated soybean seeds do not benefit U.S. soybean production. This past January, the agency also concluded that imidacloprid used on soybean seeds, harms individual bees and bee colonies at levels often found in farm fields.
Take action: Tell the EPA to ban bee-killing pesticides today!
We must hold the EPA accountable to act fast to protect pollinators from pesticides that tax their immune systems. Thankfully, Friends of the Earth members are demanding that EPA protect pollinators from pesticides. Yesterday, we submitted comments from more than 44,887 Friends of the Earth members and 49,888 Friends of the Earth Action members, urging the EPA to take immediate action to ban imidacloprid to protect pollinators.
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