Tip of the iceburg?

I heard about it some time ago. There was a show on the telly about bees carking it all over America, and even in Europe it was a problem. Nobody knew why, and there was concern that without knowing the actual cause then Australian bees as well may succumb. 

The latest research is pretty well showing that it's a pesticide being used that's affecting the bees, and that perhaps there should be a broader measure of exactly what it's going to affect before we introduce a new pesticide into the environment. It's disturbing to say the least, just what is going into food production these days, and how it's affecting things down that track that nobody's even considered.

Scientists with the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have re-created the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of a popular pesticide, imidacloprid. Bee populations have been dying mysteriously throughout North America and Europe since 2006, but the cause behind the decline, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, has eluded scientists. However, coming on the heels of two studies published last week in Science that linked bee declines to neonicotinoid pesticides, of which imidacloprid is one, the new study adds more evidence that the major player behind Colony Collapse Disorder is not disease, or mites, but pesticides that began to be widely used in the 1990s.
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That mechanism? High-fructose corn syrup. Many bee-keepers have turned to high-fructose corn syrup to feed their bees, which the researchers say did not imperil bees until U.S. corn began to be sprayed with imidacloprid in 2004-2005. A year later was the first outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder.

It doesn't take much to eventually kill the bees accord to Lu, who said an incredibly small amount (20 parts per billion) of imidacloprid was enough to lead to Colony Collapse Disorder within 6 months.
Link

What's more, after looking up Imidacloprid here, it's advertised on site called "Ausgro", with this glowing endorsement:

Imidacloprid is a very safe to use low toxic insecticide that was first introduced to the US in 1994, previously patented by Bayer and used in Confidor. The Sharp Shooter Complete Bug & Insect Spray is another new product which Ausgro has released in a range of products designed to give effective plant protection with the least effect on the environment. Imidacloprid is a systemic insecticide that works from inside the plant to give long term protection from insect attack. At the same time it is widely accepted to be one of the safest new insecticides for both people and the environment. You can now take care of your garden and the environment.
Ausgro 

 

I can only hope that the most recent news about this product is taken notice of by the regulatory authorities here and steps taken to protect Australian bees from the same fate as those in Europe and America. This is particularly disturbing after the recent Pink Slime scare down here, and most recently the arsenic in chooks thing.

Is pink slime just the tip of the corrupted food iceberg? In an April 4, 2012 article in the New York Times, journalist Nicholas Kristof spotlights two recent studies that have found many unappetizing (to say the least) chemicals lurking in poultry.
Shine

I'm starting to wonder just WTF is going on with our food. I mean, should there now be a label on chickens when you buy them "may contain arsenic" or some shit? How about not putting it in there in the first place?

I guess you can go overboard with all this, and get paranoid. I will try though and take more of an interest in the sort of foods I buy and what sort of process they've gone through before getting to the supermarket shelf.