Soil Association urges ban on pesticides to halt bee deaths

I have copied the following item from The Dr. Rath Health Foundation Newsletter

Soil Association urges ban on pesticides to halt bee deaths
The Soil Association has urged the government to ban pesticides linked to honeybee deaths around the world. The chemicals are widely used in UK agriculture but have been banned as a precaution in four other European countries. Last week the Italian government issued an immediate suspension after it accepted that the pesticides were implicated in killing honeybees, joining France, Germany and Slovenia.
Read article in the Guardian (UK)
Comment: Germany suspended sales of the pesticides in May of this year after 700 beekeepers along the Rhine reported that two-thirds of their bees had died following the application of clothianidin. In France, imidacloprid has been banned on sunflowers since 1999 and as a sweetcorn treatment since 2003, after a third of honeybees were wiped out. Imidacloprid and clothianidin are produced by a division of the chemical manufacturer Bayer.