Did Home Depot board the Woo train?

manofthesea

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Home Depot has announced that it is going to start requiring plant suppliers to label the plants that contain neonicotinoid pesticides on plants that they sell. This move is in response to honeybee decline/colony collapse. Other US companies are also going to require supplier to stop the use of neonics to help prevent the decline of honeybee populations.
Home Depot and other U.S. companies are working to eliminate or limit use of a type of pesticide suspected of helping cause dramatic declines in honeybee populations needed to pollinate key American crops, officials said on Wednesday.
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Monsanto and Bayer are stating that mites are a primary cause of colony collapse (the term used here in Hawaii).
Scientists, consumer groups, beekeepers and others say bee deaths are linked to the neonic pesticides. But Monsanto,, Bayer and other agrichemical companies say a mix of factors such as mites are killing the bees.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/25/us-usa-agriculture-bees-idUSKBN0F02M120140625

In fact here in Hawaii studies are now being conducted in ways to combat the varroa mite. Monsanto is also a big player here with their GE corn.
Just this week Sciencedaily reported that the UK is now studying the varroa mite and its link to colony collapse.
DWV is one of the most common viruses infecting European honeybees. Although present in almost all colonies, high levels of deformed wing disease -- characterised by developmental deformities, reduced foraging ability and longevity -- are only common when Varroa is also present.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140626172742.htm

So is Home Depot going to start playing soothing music to the plants next? Eleventy one?
 
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I am a bit confused. Why are you describing Home Depot's actions as woo?
 
Because Monsanto and Bayer have put the blame for colony collapse disorder squarely on the varroa mite. While Home Depot is now taking action against pesticides.
Not only that but what effect does Home Depot expect to have in saving bees while selling possibly diseased/infected houseplants? (Big agriculture will still be using the suspect pesticides)
 
Bayer says "no, it's not our product, what a crazy woo idea, it's mites"? Good for them. R.J. Reynolds made similarly confident and dismissive statements of the "woo" science correlating smoking with lung cancer.

Seriously, the neonicotinoid hypothesis for CCW seems to be perfectly standard evidence-based science with no woo component I can see. The evidence in its favor is not ironclad, but neither is the mites evidence. Also: CCW is an important enough problem that I'm happy with a belt-and-suspenders solution. If the best scientists can say is "50-50 chance it's neonicotinoids or mites" then banning neonicotinoids sounds like a positive-value action item.
 
manofthesea said:
Not only that but what effect does Home Depot expect to have in saving bees while selling possibly diseased/infected houseplants? (Big agriculture will still be using the suspect pesticides)
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a) "diseased houseplants" isn't, like, instant death to everyone. It's aphids or scale which everyone has anyway but which look bad on the store shelves.

b) If it's neonicotinoids to blame, then colony collapse is a localized. Keep them out of your suburb and that's good for the bees that forage in your suburb. I have a backyard garden and lots of bees (very happy bees thank you) and I do not live within foraging distance of "big agriculture".

c) What do you want Home Depot to do? Be the last in line to ban something that they think should be banned? "Here, ma'am, it's two-for-one on those coleus. Yes, they're treated with bee-killing chemicals, but your garden will be just a drop in the bee-death bucket. Home Depot is proudly waiting for someone else to make the first move."
 
Ladewig said:
I am a bit confused. Why are you describing Home Depot's actions as woo?
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Here at JREF, if you disagree with something or want to make yourself look "enlightened," you declare the opposing thing "woo." Geez I thought everybody knew that.

;)
 
Angry bees are one thing, but angry bees jonesing for a nicotine fix? No way man, no way. Give them their neonicotine.
 
Even if it was "woo", and I've seen nothing to indicate that, Home Depot is responding to the marketplace. I have no doubt that they have had a significant amount of customers express concern about the issue, and HD is apparently adjusting accordingly, as any business reliant on consumers would. I fail to see the mystery.
 
TheGoldcountry said:
Even if it was "woo", and I've seen nothing to indicate that, Home Depot is responding to the marketplace. I have no doubt that they have had a significant amount of customers express concern about the issue, and HD is apparently adjusting accordingly, as any business reliant on consumers would. I fail to see the mystery.
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Hmm, yeah. This is probably what's going on. If Home Depot execs felt very strongly about the issue, Home Depot would probably just stop buying from those particular suppliers. Requiring labeling allows them to continue buying and selling these plants, but also allows their probably small but non-trivial number of concerned customers to make an informed decision.
 
I had thought colony collapse was caused by a double infection of a virus and a fungus?
 
ben m said:
Seriously, the neonicotinoid hypothesis for CCW seems to be perfectly standard evidence-based science with no woo component I can see. The evidence in its favor is not ironclad, but neither is the mites evidence.
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More to the point, most serious opinions on the matter generally say it's both, and probably a variety of other factors as well. The idea that every phenomenon must have a single root cause is strangely pervasive. With something like UFOs, that leads to endless threads where people demand we find "the cause" of UFO sightings and no amount of explaining that different sightings were the result of different things helps. With bees, you get various studies showing that, for example, pesticides on their own don't suddenly cause all bees to drop dead, and people therefore conclude that pesticides can't be a factor at all. In reality, it's a lot more complex. Pesticides might not instantly kill all bees, but throw in a bunch of parasites, some habitat loss and breakup, a few invasive predators and/or competitors, and suddenly you have a situation that isn't exactly great for bees even if no one factor can have the blame definitively pinned on it.
 
Cuddles said:
More to the point, most serious opinions on the matter generally say it's both, and probably a variety of other factors as well. The idea that every phenomenon must have a single root cause is strangely pervasive. With something like UFOs, that leads to endless threads where people demand we find "the cause" of UFO sightings and no amount of explaining that different sightings were the result of different things helps. With bees, you get various studies showing that, for example, pesticides on their own don't suddenly cause all bees to drop dead, and people therefore conclude that pesticides can't be a factor at all. In reality, it's a lot more complex. Pesticides might not instantly kill all bees, but throw in a bunch of parasites, some habitat loss and breakup, a few invasive predators and/or competitors, and suddenly you have a situation that isn't exactly great for bees even if no one factor can have the blame definitively pinned on it.
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Agreed. For that matter the pesticides and mites are not mutually exclusive. It's entirely possible that pesticide toxicity makes bees more susceptible to mite infestation.

I am impressed not at all that the manufacturers of the pesticides in question claim that something else is causing honeybee decline
 
manofthesea said:
Because Monsanto and Bayer have put the blame for colony collapse disorder squarely on the varroa mite. While Home Depot is now taking action against pesticides.
Not only that but what effect does Home Depot expect to have in saving bees while selling possibly diseased/infected houseplants? (Big agriculture will still be using the suspect pesticides)
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But the cited article does not support that position. The article says some scientists blame the mite and other scientists blame the neonicotinoids. Do you have a different source that shows that the scientists working for Bayer and Monsanto are more rigorous or more thorough in their research?

Plus, I agree with the previous posters that responding to market conditions is not necessarily woo.
 
Not only that but what effect does Home Depot expect to have in saving bees while selling possibly diseased/infected houseplants? (Big agriculture will still be using the suspect pesticides)
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There are several pesticides that are safe and effective for use on landscape plants. Neonics are not the only option but they are an option that seems to adversely affect honeybees. It shouldn't a problem for suppliers to move to another pesticide like a carbamate or a pyrethroid if they fear consumers won't buy plants treated with neonics.
 
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Why are people surprised that chemicals designed to kill insects might be involved in killing insects?
 
TheGoldcountry said:
Even if it was "woo", and I've seen nothing to indicate that, Home Depot is responding to the marketplace. I have no doubt that they have had a significant amount of customers express concern about the issue, and HD is apparently adjusting accordingly, as any business reliant on consumers would. I fail to see the mystery.
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Well, imagine that Walgreen's had decided to discontinue offering flu shots because they thought their consumers would associate them with autism. Imagine that McDonald's stopped buying Iowa corn because a popular crop-circle theory told many people that Iowa was being prepped for a first-contact landing strip. That might be McDonalds and Walgreens "responding to the marketplace" in a rational manner, but nobody here would hesitate to accuse them of boarding the woo train.

The reason Home Depot's action is different is that the nicotinoid/bee science is not woo to begin with.
 
CORed said:
Agreed. For that matter the pesticides and mites are not mutually exclusive. It's entirely possible that pesticide toxicity makes bees more susceptible to mite infestation.

I am impressed not at all that the manufacturers of the pesticides in question claim that something else is causing honeybee decline
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Or perhaps the pesticides eliminate a competitor thus allowing the mites to fill a niche and killing bees in the process.

Ecology, it's *********** complicated. Fiddle with things at your own risk.

TheGoldcountry said:
I'm sure all of us have seen it in regards to multitudes of topics. Human linear thinking, A=>B=>C, etc.
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Indeed.
 
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