we are working hard listening to keep you informed on overwhelms we're all in this again run together and we're making sure you stay safe everybody stays it is very safe and stay safe please stay safe. with bain's dying at record rates these beekeepers are protesting against german chemicals giant they are and it sector sides. we are the victims provide a huge service to society just like our bees pollinate food crops and this is the thanks of us. for decades studies around the world have highlighted the dangers of certain insecticides something bear was keen to hush up they wanted to keep it

secret they didn't want to publicize something which would be damaging for the company of it being a city by which to start a debate so they could carry on making money with. these insecticides known as mere negative point have earned billions for the company a case of placing an innings of about ethics or 13 that i know from on what isn't normal is breaking the laws concealing facts your guess should you shores up. how influential is the bay a group and to the authorities fail to exercise proper oversight. but i scull in southwest germany is a fertile region and home to plenty of canola and corn fields cost of car runs of be found here. he's passionate about what he does his bees are like part of

a family. it really experienced any problems with pesticides until one spring day 12 years ago. and you passed had appeared in the rhine valley and was threatening to devastate the corn fields to save the harvest the authorities allowed the large scale use of near nicotine or its only annex as they are also now . called me up so i could see the farmer sowing his corn and from one moment to the next stop flying it was perfect weather the bees were out origin everything was wonderful but as the farmer sowed his seed everything stopped although these in the air disappeared of. insecticide the seeds had been treated with resulted in a toxic dust cloud that killed 12000 b. colonies in the region more than 500000000 being suffered an agonizing death.

it's not the best right close to being a fuck it was the world our worst case of be poisoning by legal means since be conservation began it was very frustrating and very emotional. it really got me down. plus look i thought it got so bad that i couldn't drive over to the beehives anymore every time i got near i was met by the stench of decomposing bees i just couldn't handle it anymore like stick it could. during planting some of the red pesticide coaching the corn seeds rubbed off and was released into the environment. does little to what's that that was sown doesn't the mice yes or corn seeds dress with insecticide but on to the mice or clear it was all what happened. this is to

order you see this red dust that's insecticide residue that is rubbed off the sea and it was released into the air during planters in the orbital gulf and stop in the bees died instantly so what tires of what if lookin of the that those that passed through the dust cloud yes. but the worst of it was that the dust settled on flowering plants so the remaining bee is then gathered contaminated pollen i mean you know the pull of the summer at home. rather than being sprayed on to crops like traditional pesticides and an example of an applied in the form of a c. dressing the seed coated with insecticide is then drilled into the ground using a seed planter the toxins are affected from the root to the entire plant as a grows making it i mean to pests both in the ground and the field. the station about virgin birth investigated what had gone wrong and what i scar to the beekeeper's amazement plane was placed on the mechanical seat planters. the

agriculture ministry echoed bears official line saying that had the seeds been sewn correctly everything would have been fine and then eggs were nevertheless banned for use on cool in germany they're still committed for other crops they are often 2200000 euros and fast track days but only on one condition for the beekeepers. in return i shall seed all existing and future claims to compensation to the state of body view to. the investigation the government have bought and looking back had certainly become the mediation of the offer from bail was actually made by the agriculture department is logged by the river bank or no bear it was state of bottoms that wanted to buy their way out of. it was touted as an emergency aid for the beekeepers because of what they were just covering themselves so there was a real push to settle the matter quickly where they knew the bees had been poisoned

otherwise it would have taken a lot longer to get the money to fish that many of the beekeepers accepted the compensation and bear was left alone the ban on their negative noise in corn wasn't a problem as they were still approved for many other crops between 19022017 around 3700 tonnes of the agent was sold in germany alone and they and other manufacturers like syngenta supplied variously arnica to know its to more than $100.00 countries and in the billions of euros the scientists accuse the producers of making money at the expense of the environment. because studies show that near negative noise actually impact entire ecosystems. dutch toxicologists 1010 because has spent years studying the substances sold by companies like they are. he believes near negative no into the most toxic insecticide ever produced we metallica's at

a clinic in the never. and even though he was undergoing treatment for a new man year when we saw him late last year he agreed to speak to us. you name it . seems vasilios annoyed or water soluble and relatively mobile in the ground. so when it rains they are easily washed into the ground water and runoff water with zomi for brighton's disease this means they affect the whole environment and are also absorbed by wild flowers and plants via their roots. when does. the entire landscape becomes toxic for insects. there's a group of them so it's fair to assume that this will result in mass insect deaths . and if the insects disappear the ecosystem collapses. that's why this is an ecological armageddon we are destroying the whole of nature.

cantenna has believed that near next to the main cause of insect deaths around the world and that via the food chain they're also responsible for the decline in the population of birds reptiles and amphibians and there's evidence that the harmful to humans too. so why are these insecticide still being sold. and 2800 the european union did at least ban 3 of the 5 near naked to no it's because of the threat to beings but france had already banned one products containing the toxins back in 1999 it took 19 years for the e.u. to catch up so why did the french authorities act so much earlier. and paris we need scientists show mark bomb attack and beekeeper only family. they have instigate the 999 band at the time being he was very experiencing mysterious dialysis but my time proved up an ear negative no it's produced by their want to

blame him and when the results were made public and the beekeepers protested the company was swift to respond to them by yelling the very quickly they are starting to exert pressure to get us to keep quiet in our example what they didn't want to be keepers causing problems the book in more tentative and they are sued me for libel. i don't produce honey from sunflowers or. i was acting in my capacity as head of the national union of people this is what they sold me as a private individual and i got your lawyer defended us and we wonder and bear chose not to appeal the ruling but i wasn't the only one here. the scientists also came under pressure the aim was to stop the debate so they could carry on making money when you didn't commit but the french government was also well known by the mass speed deaths and had commissioned a study that's go you will do you think before we even started our research will bear began using the agriculture ministry to try to impose its methods and

threshold values on us so that wasn't a good start if you looked at then when we got our results they came into the lab to check my analysis and find any errors they were desperate to find a mistake but i haven't made any big event and because we had proven that it talks about poetry even the blossoms of the plant you know if they were forced to accept our results they're going to later i mentioned the pressure exerted by bayer to the french media that you do but yeah i've been receiving 2 letters from a beer lawyer one addressed to me personally and one to the head of my institute you know they wanted to use their influence to force me to keep my mouth shut if they expected me a scientist to hide my results in order to protect their sales. but yes it would be best that easy but that wasn't his 1st brush with. works for one of the top research institutions in france it was back in the mid 1990 s. that he was commissioned by the french agriculture ministry to investigate the mass the deaths. suspicion had fallen on me or nigga to know it 1st

made by bayer called i made a cloak print. says that at the request of the regional agricultural thirty's a employees were actively involved in the 1st study. of mad people but i believe it's normal for a company like bayer to be informed if one of its products is being investigated anymore that i think you could. called you both good to their feet but what absolutely isn't normal is when representatives of the company whose product is being assessed are not often determining details of the approach to be taken including the financing and even the publication of the final results you'll. keep a headache sure you've done. there was certainly a lot of money at stake for bear the investigation began. bees were sent on the one hand to fields of sunflowers treated with me only get to know what's on the other 2 untreated fields for control purposes at least that's what drama rama time and his

colleagues were told. they were only supposed to analyze the fields containing the bayer pesticides but later they realized that the control field was also contaminated with insecticides. called you'll carry it you know we scientists complained when we realized that the control fields have been treated with fungus eyes and other insecticides for he does it he did it just isn't normal for an experiment of this loving not that's all the kitty. but. you did have a good but the management committee for the study linking order complaints by order knew it legally your the b. could be put out the door to get heavy organ instead the results of this comparative study which we now know were worthless were taken as proof that a medical oprah is harmless or b.s. because you eat what is that. suddenly bears insecticides appeared beyond suspicion any possibility of a ban have been dismissed for now at least. but don't want time and his colleagues

at the institute then carried out their own study on behalf of the beekeepers this time bailout was not involved and the result was staggering. level demo play about 3 to give it you were able to prove that everything relevant to the be of is a big whether it was the corn sunflowers the ball or the director water who clean but everything was contaminated i mean yeah he knew he could you know eat it if you look at the levels of toxins in the open countryside were so high that they were sufficient to either kill the meus or at least cause a grave long term problem is hugely to college she said. in 1909 france then banned the use of nigga to know it's but initially only for some plants that wasn't enough for the b.g. because. they wanted a blanket ban on all near nicotine oit's so i had the services of a paris lawyer but now before. he took up the case against bayer and other

manufacturers. eventually it went to the considered town branches highest court for administrative cases. for realize that companies had exploited weaknesses in the licensing systems to get their products on the market league's eastern dogma modest european directives refer to what's known as the hazard quotient. this quotient is exceeded the manufacturer is obliged to carry out a field experiment under realistic conditions to prove that the product is not harmful. to your head also that we discovered that this control experiment which was obligatory in order to gain approval it never took place. if the tests had been carried out as european regulations dictated these products would never have been authorized and i've read it if it did that because it's in part thanks to bono falls persistence that france became the 1st country in the

world to ban the use of all near nicotine or it's in 2018. in germany meanwhile continued to earn wealth from the insecticides mannix were used on many different crops as a panacea for all pests. the discoveries and fronts didn't appear to be all that the german authorities even though beekeepers here complained of heavy losses but a hate figure was until recently president of the european beekeepers association he told us of his organization's relief when germany finally announced a study on the decline in b. population but the relief was short lived just thought we realized that the initiative only began once the threat was perceived of germany having to adopt the same stance as france i frequent there was clearly great concern that the insecticides could be banned here too. was the industry looking to preempt that move. it would appear that that was the reason why bayh and another next make

a syngenta took part in the study other hey frank assumed realized something was very wrong you don't see our jobs every year there was an annual report and every year the findings would go through the media. the role i might which causes honeybee deaths is really terrible. but we found no crabs with pesticides and it's perfect it was like a public relations coup for them obviously we became increasingly critical of how the whole project was structured with the methods they were using when they wouldn't have found any link between pesticides and honeybee deaths anyway countries are in a dobie other linux have nothing to do with a mass big deaths now the apparent finding that the find public opinion right up until the disaster in prescott in 2008 the industry have put huff a 1000000 euros into the be monitoring project women's safety for not doing this project when you look at how the project was financed it's pretty obvious and the one who pays the piper calls the 2 minute towing the german be monitoring project

was financed almost entirely by the insecticide makers. the beekeepers association walked out of the project in protest but by this point questions were also being raised about whether any are needed to know it's harm not just peace but other wildlife too. which come to me an expert tanika gardens where we meet spanish toxicologist francisco sanchez. he conducted a major study on the annex that attracted global interest. so when you published your study in the beginning of this year what was the conclusion that we found in this in the countries where this has been studied which is mostly european american but also countries around the world like a seal or japan 40 percent of the species of insects declining and of those one 3rd of them are really climbing rapidly and they have threatened with extinction.

eaten says near nicus annoyance play a key role in that trend and they don't just kill insects they damage entire ecosystems. fireproof that in japan where he studied irrigation and rice fields over a 2 year period. these ecosystems are home to my new twitter free. it's known as daphnia as well as crayfish and japanese rice fish called mint aka. one day the rice farmers noticed that much of this wildlife was dying apart from the water fleas the crayfish were especially hard hit a laboratory achieving university was asked to investigate the research is soon found the culprit the same near nicotine knowing that it killed the beings in france we know melissa of certain very curiously in the middle of the well in the in the medical some stupid with even that loopy where all absolutely all a 100 percent of the fish were contaminated with it but of course on but our site

and of course we put it down to the fact that to me that look related or i'm the only go to nights in here it's the new system so it's all species were sensitive to the insecticide except duffy. so there was the news of it so that was an anomaly and they are fortunate fact is that this anomaly had been used as the reason to say that this insect is i was say for a moment when he was a complete anomaly. the poison did not kill the tiny water fleas but it did effectively exterminate much larger species that weaken their immune system so severely that they were easy prey for parasite. the results were indisputable or so centuries by a thought but he hadn't reckoned with a form and pay a scientist who would actually want to develop me in x. the day i explained the resource or the 1st year measure course on stallions to the

whole group and to the faculty. at the end he just couldn't understand the resource himself and he has me so whether you want to do with these results and i said work the 1st thing i want to do is to publish them because it sounds in nobility and he really. you know what to say he was speechless do you really want to buy music yes i think it's important to let the world know what's happening but they wanted to keep it secret they didn't want publicized sounds in which will be done a gene for the company. the toxicologist says the laboratory then terminated his contract but he published the results anyway. the events he witnessed indicate that at least one bear scientists knew right back in 2004 about the kind of devastation an ear look at a noise can cause an ecosystems. from our research it's clear that bayer tried for decades to provide any kind of universal ban on near nicotine or its. in

front the company sought to intimidate beekeepers and scientists and played a leading role in a questionable study on b. mortality that exonerated the insecticides. in germany insecticide makers funded have been monitoring project it led to the widespread belief that near nicotine noise had nothing to do with mass be deaths. and in japan it would appear bayer employees even sought to suppress the publication of a crucial study scientists approval millionaire get annoyed who are responsible for the collapse of entire ecosystems. so what does bear say to all these allegations that research results we spent weeks trying to communicate with the company and when denied entry to its premises. bev representatives refused to talk to us on camera are written questions went unanswered instead the company criticized what it

described as unfair treatment by the media and many sent us this general statement . that he remains convinced that the use of munich it annoyed to say for humans and the environment provided they are used responsibly and in accordance with the instructions for use. unica to know it only kill pests were told. by a study's claim that not even long term use is harmful to be other insects or fish as for the allocation of bay employees sought to manipulate other studies no comment when we return to dutch toxicologist hank telecasts he spent years studying these pesticides during that time he discovered 2 studies carried out by they are the findings of which are astounding in one a base scientist describes the effects of the 1st near negative noise on the nervous system of a species of fly these are facts that ascribe does irreversible. amid a cloak produce the 1st highly effective insecticide that works on the principle of

almost completely blocking receptors in a way that is virtually irreversible. one of the bay of studies was completed in 1901 so one year before the product was granted in the right approval when tenet is confronted by it with these studies he was taken aback by the response. jets the mayor now claims that the blocking of the receptors in the nervous system is reversible so you still are contradicting themselves. if the effect is reversible it depends on the concentration and so you can define a threshold level we're going to if the market is irreversible you can't define a threshold level and so the effect is cumulative zooms so i was rumored 03. the virginal beta study is key because if the toxins remain in the nervous system that

can lead to death even if the insects were only exposed to a small dose so if they knew that why did the company take no action you mean a cloak regular in medical open alone generates annual turnover of nearly a 1000000000 euros or stuff it's so i think that led them to just claim something so they could keep selling this pesticide. and. if they had considered the impact is substance has they would have had to take it off the market margaret. we also asked the bear group about these studies carried out by it and scientists and once again the company declined to comment. there's enough evidence to prove the dangers and the annex but authorities have either been slow to respond or taken no action at all if we take the european union for example a look at how pesticides are authorized is highly revealing. first the active

ingredient is approved for a wide usage the manufacturer can apply in any member state france was chosen for the 1st knee or negative. but only the manufacturers test the substance for toxicity and environmental impact. the authorities just do the paperwork. in germany best the federal office of consumer protection and food safety along with 3 other agencies none of them test products. so everything depends on studies carried out by the manufacturer as the european beekeepers association points out it's a system that all too easy to manipulate. this think on the manufacturers can intervene at all levels thank you even get a say in how any prescribed tests are structured for tests did. you serve us done goes up until now it's also been the case that these studies that

a manufacturer commissioned or undertook could remain a corporate c.e.o. for a time as does he. the odds when they couldn't be published on and damn it also steamed me so no one else could tell what the licensing authorities actually checked. her daughter were proved not just matters that makes life easy for the authorities because no one can really question their decisions and try to recruit from as well as 10 it's a very very convenient relationship between industry and regulatory authorities would you rather. to this day remains a distinctly sickly system what if independent voters were to carry out tests prior to approval instead of these powerful chemical companies we'd like to discuss this with a german agriculture minister yulia kleck not for weeks we tried to get an interview

when we finally got an appointment we were told that we couldn't use our camera and and the minister had no time for us instead we received a statement saying that the ministry was committed to continuing to develop the approval and licensing procedures on the basis of the latest developments in science and technology and yet and a directive aimed at tightening the approval regulations for pesticides has been stalled for years but germany among those standing in the way. critics like french lawyer ben awful say it's the result of successful lobbying by manufacturers like they are. looking for but now you've just hit a lot we mustn't be naive of. the goal and purpose of these companies is to make money with these products your supporters don't even know them are good and that's what they do with all means at their disposal that's normal. sort of culture not much. all of all she certain that i know what isn't normal is breaking

the law concealing facts playing for time. do they need or don't in order to prevent products that are harmful from being taken off the market would you really don't all think it's so messy. even though the evidence is clear nearly continuing to still one of the most widely used insecticides in the world. they are on the one hand has influenced scientific studies and intimidated and seems its critics while on the other lacks licensing rules and on foreign teams who have ignored deeply troubling studies have prevented meaningful controls and meaningful changes will mean companies being monitored more closely and warnings he did.

allegedly filled with garbage a serious health hazard to nairobi river in kenya. the environmental damage begins right at the source and by the creatures labeled it is a completely told me from. the government has done next to nothing about this problem it's old local residents decided to take action. the brits are sick to change it it's on t w letter we were wrong when do we want it now 80 percent of americans at some point in our lives will experience hardship listening. to. some audience. or. frankfurt. international gateway to the best connection cells and road and train. located in the heart of europe you are connected to the whole world. experience

outstanding shopping and dining offers and try our services. be our gassed at frankfurt airport managed by for part. this is d. w. news and these are our top stories researchers in britain say they've identified the 1st drug proven to significantly reduce the death of patients the risk of death in patients hospitalized with covert 19 the low cost steroids dexamethasone was found to cut deaths by a 3rd in patients.