Please find below some recent articles on pesticides and related topics. Do feel free to recommend more articles by selecting “Recommend a page or site” above or access a more comprehensive list of articles by using the Delicious cloud in the right-hand colmumn.

• The Three A’s of Food Security (Sciencebase blog)
• Differing patterns in food price falls (BBC)
• French village goes organic one day a week (3News)
• EU survey reveals poor state of biodiversity (Euractiv)
• EU farm subsidies ‘inconsistent’ with global food security (Euractiv)
• Sweden introduces climate labelling for food (Euractiv)
• World food prices: Whatever happened to the food crisis? (The Economist)
• Agriculture Demand Outpacing Honeybee Increase, Researchers Say (Bloomberg)
• EFSA publishes report on pesticide residues in food (Food Production Daily)
• Forum on the Future of Agriculture goes on the road… (Blogactiv)

Bees are a fundamental part of sustainable agriculture. Bees and other pollinating insects are responsible for the pollination of more than 80% of crops in Europe. So it’s been extremely worrying to see a mass decline in them over the past years. It’s got to such a critical point that this year the EU has funded a nine-month research project to better understand the problem and investigate the potential cause.

Hubert Deluyker, EFSA’s Director of Scientific Cooperation and Assistance, who is leading the project said: “This project will be an important step forward in international efforts to understand and help tackle the reported decline in bee populations, which could have widespread implications not only in environmental terms but also with regard to the food chain”.

“I strongly encourage scientists and other interested parties – such as beekeeping associations, for example – to share their valuable scientific data, knowledge and experience with the organisers of this project,” he added.

The sudden and dramatic decline in bee populations is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Many theories have been put forward to the potential cause of CCD, including parasites, the use of pesticides in farming, wet weather and lack of access to suitable forage crops. For further information ESFA has published a list of FAQs on bee mortality and bee surveillance in Europe alongside their press release.

PI is tracking the ongoing conversation and available research on bees and CCD and thought the following article written by bee expert Kim Flottum in America, called Colony Collapse Disorder Showing Up Again in East Coast Hives,  published on The Daily Green, The Consumer’s Guide to the Green Revolution.  It shows that this season in California CCD is back; worse than expected, yet still with no obvious cause.

Also La Croix published an article yesterday called Surmortalité des abeilles: plus de 40 causes recensées, which is worth reading to get a view on the situation in France.

As ever, PI welcomes comments, supporting information or links to the latest news on CCD and so would EFSA.

We recently spoke to Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle, Executive Director of The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which was set up by the European Union in 2002 as an “an independent source of scientific advice and communication on risks associated with the food chain”. Ms Geslain-Lanéelle told us about EFSA’s remit, workload and resources; and went on to emphasise the importance of science in the agency’s work, and the difficulties involved in balancing the health of farmers and the need for farmer to be able to deal with pests.