Häagen Dazs comes to Capitol Hill, pleads for help

This morning at a House Committee on Agriculture held a hearing on the decreasing honeybee population. Honeybees are used for producing honey but are also necessary for the annual pollination of other plant life. Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.) the chairman of the committee said that top agriculture researchers, in conjunction with the US Department of Agriculture, termed this massive decline in honeybees as “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD) and set out to pinpoint the cause of this problem.

Adding their voice to the debate was Häagen Dazs ice cream company which says that more than 40 percent of their flavors are dependent on honeybees for the nuts, fruits and berries that go into their products. According to Häagen Dazs, one of every three bites the average American eats is directly attributed to honeybee pollination.

Dr. Edward Knipling from USDA said that there are many theories about this problem. According to Knipling these include “increased pressures from viruses and other pathogens, parasites, environmental stresses, poor nutrition, transport stresses, and pesticides.”

As Knipling noted, pesticides are viewed as a leading possible contributer to population decline. As a result, pesticides were found in a case of 108 pollen samples with a total of 46 different pesticides. In one case, a total of 17 different pesticides were found in a single sample with the average sample holding 5 different pesticides. The effect is that the honeybees immune systems are hindered thus contributing to the honeybees decline.