Canadian government regulators colluded with the major biotech and pesticide company Bayer to stop a ban on neonicotinoid pesticides. Journalist Marc Fawcett-Atkinson at Canada’s National Observer has exposed how regulators helped Bayer undermine a study that shows high levels of neonicotinoid contamination in wetlands. The strategy was successful in stopping a proposed ban on three neonicotinoids. Read the full story: “Exclusive: How a federal agency colluded with a pesticide maker to silence a Canadian researcher”
This latest revelation of government-corporate collusion to support the sale of dangerous pesticides follows the 2023 exposé that federal GMO regulators worked directly together with the pesticide and biotechnology lobby group CropLife Canada in a “Tiger Team” to remove regulation of many new genetically modified (gene edited) plants. It also comes after the recent exposure of a global corporate public relations campaign that provided corporate and government employees with profiles of critics of pesticides and GMOs – If you missed that story, you can read about it in our last newsletter: Exposed: Global Corporate Operation to Push GMOs & Pesticides.
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Bayer (formerly Monsanto) is the world’s biggest biotechnology company, the biggest seed company, and the second-largest pesticide company. The company controls 23% of the global seed market and 16% of the agrochemicals market.
Neonicotinoids (neonics) are a group of insecticides that are widely used but have serious and often lethal impacts on pollinators and other beneficial insects, as well as songbirds. They are most commonly used in the form of coatings on seeds, and are systemic, which means they are absorbed into the entire plant, exposing insects more broadly. They are also persistent in the environment and soluble in water. The European Union restricts use of the same three neonicotinoids that were proposed for a Canadian ban. (The term “pesticides” includes herbicides, insecticides and fungicides.)
In this case, federal government officials from three departments actively worked to help Bayer undermine the findings of ecologist Christy Morrissey of the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Morrissey sent her results to the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) at Health Canada but regulators shared her findings with Bayer, without her consent. Bayer then hired a team of researchers who wrote a 27-page report that selectively pared down Dr. Morrissey’s data, excluding “problematic sites” where wetland samples showed dangerous levels of neonicotinoids. In its final decision not to ban the pesticides, the PMRA repeated Bayer’s findings “nearly word-for-word”, concluding that the majority of Dr. Morrissey’s data was “not relevant” to the risk assessment.
In 2023, Dr. Bruce Lanphear, the co-chair of the PMRA Scientific Advisory Committee resigned, saying, “I don’t have confidence because PMRA is relying on obsolete methods. They aren’t being transparent on how they’re regulating chemicals.”
Over twenty years ago, a parliamentary committee concluded that, “The PMRA is already a captive of the pesticide industry.” Read more in the article “Canada’s pesticide regulator was ‘captured by industry’ from day one.”
CBAN’s calculations find that herbicide sales in Canada have increased by 244% since GM crops have been introduced. Read our factsheet: Genetically engineered crops have increased herbicide use.