How a federal agency colluded with a pesticide maker to sile

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How a federal agency colluded with a pesticide maker to silence a Canadian researcher

[ https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/1 ... researcher ]

By Marc Fawcett-Atkinson News - October 17, 2024

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EXCERPT: "The federal pesticide regulator collaborated with an agrochemical giant to undermine research by a prominent Canadian scientist to stave off an impending ban of a class of pesticides harmful to human brains and sperm and deadly to bees, insects and birds, Canada's National Observer has found.

Water sampling data collected on the Prairies by Christy Morrissey, a Canadian ecologist and University of Saskatchewan professor, helped form the basis for a national ban, proposed in 2016, on imidacloprid and two other related neonicotinoid pesticides used on corn, soybeans, potatoes and other crops.

Unbeknownst to Morrissey at the time, the decision to nix the proposed ban was based in part on a scant replication of her research conducted by the giant pesticide company Bayer Crop Science — with full support from federal officials in Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), at Environment and Climate Change Canada, and at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

Morrissey was stunned. "I couldn't understand how the government flip-flopped from the ban," she told Canada's National Observer. "We had all the data, and the levels we found all exceed the levels of concern. I didn't understand how they got to their decision."

Critics were furious, slamming the decision as inadequate to tackle the chemicals' environmental risk, which the PMRA had noted in the 2016 document proposing the ban was "not sustainable." . . . . "

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