April, 13 2021, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Kendra Klein, Friends of the Earth, 415-350-5957, kklein@foe.org
Kaela Bamberger, 202-222-0703, Friends of the Earth, kbamberger@foe.org
Walmart Announces Industry-Leading Policy to Protect Pollinators From Pesticides
The world’s largest food retailer jumps from an “F” to first place on Friends of the Earth’s Bee-Friendly Retailer Scorecard.
Bentonville, AR
Walmart (NYSE: WMT) announced a landmark pollinator health policy today, the most far reaching to date of any U.S. food retailer. The new policy seeks to help protect bees and other pollinators that are essential to one in three bites of food production. As the largest U.S. food retailer, Walmart's commitment will help transform growing practices on thousands of farms globally that supply fresh fruits and vegetables to the retail giant's U.S. consumers.
The company jumped from an "F" to first place on Friends of the Earth's Bee-Friendly Retailer Scorecard which ranks top U.S. grocery retailers on protecting pollinators from toxic pesticides. Walmart's commitment follows a multi-year effort urging U.S. food retailers to take action to protect pollinators led by Friends of the Earth, along with over 100 environmental, consumer, farmer, and farmworker organizations.
"Scientists across the world are sounding the alarm that we are in the midst of an 'insect apocalypse,' driven in large part by toxic pesticides," said Kendra Klein, PhD, senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth. "Walmart's policy is a major step in the right direction, but with 40% of insect pollinators facing extinction, all retailers must accelerate a race to the top before pollinators lose their race against time."
The new policy requires all global fresh produce and floral suppliers to Walmart U.S. to adopt Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices, as verified by a third-party certifier, by 2025. Suppliers may work with any of a list of third-party certifications that were benchmarked as having meaningful IPM criteria by the IPM Institute of North America. This is the first U.S. food retailer to adopt a timebound commitment to expand ecological farming methods in its supply chain.
In an industry vulnerable to climate change and biodiversity loss, IPM guides farmers to use ecological methods that support the overall sustainability of their land. IPM can reduce use of pesticides by requiring farmers to use non-chemical approaches to manage pests first, such as rotating crops, planting resistant varieties and fostering beneficial insects.
Walmart's policy recognizes that organic agriculture is protective of pollinator health. Organic agriculture is based on robust IPM practices, and the organic certification prohibits the use of over 900 pesticides, including those of highest concern for the health of pollinators and people, such as chlorpyrifos and neonicotinoids. Research shows that organic farming can help reverse pollinator declines.
Walmart's policy encourages non-organic produce suppliers to phase out the use of chlorpyrifos and neonicotinoids and to avoid replacing them with other products with a level I bee precaution rating. While other major U.S. food retailers have established pollinator health policies encouraging reduction of these pesticides, only Walmart has committed to track their use in its supply chain with the goal of increasing transparency and assessing annual progress.
Along with pesticides, Walmart's policy aims to address another driver of pollinator decline--habitat loss. It includes goals to protect, restore, and establish pollinator habitat in pollinator migration corridors and on farms in its produce supply chain.
Pollinators are essential for a sustainable food supply. Without pollinators, grocery stores would run short of a wide assortment of fruits and vegetables, nuts, beans, and even chocolate and coffee. And because bees pollinate alfalfa and other crops eaten by cows, even the dairy and meat shelves could look bare without them.
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
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'Landmark Victory': US Proposes Endangered Species Protections for Monarch Butterfly
"We're hoping that this is a call to everybody to say this species is in decline, and now is our opportunity to help reverse that decline," said one federal scientist.
Dec 10, 2024
Biodiversity defenders on Tuesday welcomed a "long overdue" move by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service toward protecting the monarch butterfly under the Endangered Species Act—the result, the Center for Biological Diversity said, of a lawsuit filed by several groups to safeguard the pollinators and their fragile habitat.
The FWS proposed designating the butterfly as threatened with extinction, four years after monarchs were placed on a waiting list for protection.
"For too long, the monarch butterfly has been waiting in line, hoping for new protections while its population has plummeted. This announcement by the Fish and Wildlife Service gets this iconic flier closer to the protections it needs, and given its staggering drop in numbers, that can't happen soon enough," said Steve Blackledge, senior director of conservation campaigns for Environment America.
Monarch butterflies journey from Mexico each spring to points across the United States east of the Rocky Mountains to pollinate and reproduce. When cooler weather arrives they migrate back to the south for the winter.
But their populations have declined by more than 95% from over 4.5 million in the 1980s, leaving the western monarch with a 99% chance of becoming extinct over the next six decades, according to federal scientists.
The decline has been driven by the widespread use of herbicides like Roundup on milkweed, the monarch's sole food source, as well as the use of neonicotinoid insecticides. Millions of monarchs are also killed by vehicles annually during their migration, and in their winter habitats they face the loss of forests due to logging.
"The monarch butterfly is an iconic North American species and like other such iconic species, including the bald eagle and American peregrine falcon, it too deserves a chance at recovery."
Rising temperatures have also disrupted the monarch's reproduction and migration, with warmer weather tricking them into staying in the north later in the year.
"The species has been declining for a number of years," FWS biologist Kristen Lundh toldThe Washington Post. "We're hoping that this is a call to everybody to say this species is in decline, and now is our opportunity to help reverse that decline."
Western monarchs are down to an estimated 233,394 butterflies, while experts say there are several million eastern monarchs in existence.
"The protections that come with Endangered Species Act listing increase the chance that these precious pollinators will rebound and recover throughout their historic range," said Andrew Carter, director of conservation policy for Defenders of Wildlife. "The monarch butterfly is an iconic North American species and like other such iconic species, including the bald eagle and American peregrine falcon, it too deserves a chance at recovery."
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During his first term, President-elect Donald Trump weakened the Endangered Species Act, limiting the definition of a "critical habitat."
"Today's monarch listing decision is a landmark victory 10 years in the making. It is also a damning precedent, revealing the driving role of pesticides and industrial agriculture in the ongoing extinction crisis," said George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety. "But the job isn't done... The service must do what science and the law require and promptly finalize protection for monarchs."
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This is a breaking story… Please check back for possible updates...
A day after Luigi Mangione was arrested and charged as the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, independent journalist Ken Klippenstien on Tuesday published what he said was the 26-year-old's highly reported on manifesto.
The existence of the handwritten document found on Mangione when he was taken into custody in Pennsylvania on Monday was confirmed by the New York Police Department, and major media outlets have quoted from it, but none had released it in full.
"My queries to The New York Times, CNN, and ABC to explain their rationale for withholding the manifesto, while gladly quoting from it selectively, have not been answered," Klippenstein said on his Substack.
According to Klippenstein—who previously published dossiers on Vice President-elect JD Vance and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the nominee for U.S. secretary of state—Mangione's manifesto reads:
To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.
Common Dreams has not independently verified its authenticity.
Klippenstein
said on social media that the manifesto he published is "the real one, not the fake one circulating online."
NBC News deputy technology editor Ben Goggin noted that language shared by Klippenstein "matches what NBC has reported here as real."
Earlier on Tuesday, Klippenstein published leaked talking points that UnitedHealthcare reportedly circulated to its employees as the insurance company faces widespread public criticism.
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Dec 10, 2024
A report released Tuesday from the environmental group Friends of the Earth finds that the U.S. food retail sector's use of pesticides on just four crops—almonds, apples, soy, and corn—could result in over $200 billion worth of financial, climate, and biodiversity risks for the industry between 2024 and 2050. Pollinators, including bees, form a crucial link between pesticide use and these risks.
The report was released in tandem with the group's annual retailer scorecard, which ranks the largest U.S. grocery stores on the "steps they are taking to address the use of toxic pesticides in their supply chains and to support the expansion of organic agriculture and other ecological solutions."
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For one thing, "under the incoming Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency will likely do even less to mitigate the damage of pesticides, putting even more onus on companies to address the escalating risks," according to Kendra Klein, deputy director of science at Friends of the Earth.
"Food retailers must urgently reduce their use of pesticides and advance organic and other ecologically regenerative approaches. They have the opportunity to lead in the fight against biodiversity collapse and climate change, helping to ensure Americans have continued access to healthy food," she said in a statement.
An estimated one-third of world crops rely on pollination, and a little less than three-fourths of fruit and vegetable crops require pollination from insects and other creatures, according to the report. Pollinators are often studied as an indicator for biodiversity risk and general environmental health—and experts cite pesticides as among the reasons that pollinators are in decline. Research also shows that pesticides poise a threat to healthy soil ecosystems.
According to the report, an estimated one-third of world crops rely on pollination, and a little less than three-fourths of fruit and vegetable crops require pollination from insects and other creatures. Pollinators are often studied as an indicator for biodiversity risk and general environmental health—and experts cite pesticides as among the reasons that pollinators are in decline, per the report. Research also shows that pesticides poise a threat to healthy soil ecosystems, the report states.
The report states that 89% of the almond crop area, 72% of apples, 100% of corn, and 40% of soy receives more than one "lethal dose" of an insecticide that is considered toxic to bees. This "quantification of the risk of pesticides to pollinators" for the four crops "provides the values to conduct the financial analysis in this study."
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