90 percent of our 2 acre garden is wild/untouched and I no longer buy plants from garden centres to protect the insect life. Still not had the usual wasp and bee nests this year though. Just some hornets in September. (East of England)

Thank you so much for explaining that, much appreciated.

I’m just now house sitting where I am supposed to apply the flea medication to the cats, so I won’t but putting it in the trash will still eventually get into the environment, what a hell! I’m 69 and I’m so tired of this modern society! How should I dispose of it, fire?

Tha absolute opposite to boring.

Prob one of the more important videos I have watched in months. Wasps have also disappeared almost entirely this year. Early in the presentation, the likelihood of human exposure seemed inetivatable and later confirmed. Scary stuff.

I was worried about flea treatments killing my dogs over the years . Convinced they cause cancers. So this year I only treated my dog twice with DIATOMACEOUS EARTH POWDER . NO FLEAS this year and no worry I am poisoning my dog ..

Scary what these '' inteligent' people are allowed to poison us with .

Humanity is under attack ,,,,, not just our Bees ...

These felt treatments are also very bad for dogs and cats. There is a whole "business" there. Dogs get ill, so for example they get seizures, or they get intestinal problems. Owner goes to the vet who treats these problems, often without succes as they continue to give the flea treatment. Maybe you can work together with specialist in this area as according to me, this should be forbidden. I in any case never treat my dogs and I had fleas only once in the past 25 years, so I think this is completely useless.

Sugar beet & sugar cane is very different! I lived in W. Africa, you could buy cane by the ft for pennies! People, kids would chew & suck on it & never had health or teeth issues! Locals cooked with pressed, sugar cane juice! No problems! Natural vs refined sugar is key!

Sugar beet farms in Norfolk, many bought out & now cannabis farms! Who is the major invester? Theresa May & her husband! Yup! We're the worlds largest exporter of medical cannabis!

Fleas seem to have become resistant to spot on treatment now? I stopped using yrs ago! Electric nit comb ( zap the parasites) or rosemary infused coconut oil & nit comb!

Amazing detailed presentation. Thank you for highlighting this

Thank you for this very informative and important video. I've been living in Northern Italy for much of the last 5 years, and I've noticed a huge reduction in bees. I've not seen one bee this year, yet I live in an area of much crop farming, particularly corn and sunflowers and huge areas of non cultivated greenery. Also, there are not many other insects except house flies and bluebottles, and I think that's due to the food waste buckets attracting them, which in turn only takes one bluebottle to lay it's eggs and a day later a seething mass of maggots 😮. Something is killing the bees but what? 😢😢😢

Nonono. Pay the petrochem and pharma industries for pesticides and fat jabs.

If memory serves correctly one report into fipronil suggested that dog hairs shed while walking outdoors can be used by birds for nesting, with adverse effects on egg viability. Do you believe this is the case ? Also thank you for a great overview.

I have no idea how you can speak about this in such a measured and matter of fact way. Respect. The more I learn, the more I want to shout this from the rooftops! Feels like we are sleep walking off a cliff :(

Thank you for an excellent video. Governments do seem to bow to public pressure sometimes so could you or one of you students start a petition and write some articles for the media to raise awareness and get a counter to big pharma.

I stopped using any pest control on my dog some years ago. I was unable to find any company or vet who could tell me what level of insecticide was excreted by treated animals, to contaminate the environment. The finding of two dead (sadly beautiful) dung beetles close to a dog poo, made me ask this question. Pesticides and herbicides are poisons. Many life processes are similar in any living thing. So I don't want to poison myself or the environment. Since I gave up these horrid chemicals, my dog has never had a flea. The occasional tick is picked off with a special tick twister.

One thing I don’t think you mentioned is when Bee keepers take the honey off the hives they have to give them sugar back. The bees are being fed on sugar throughout the winter. So sugar beet is fed to honeybees.

At the same time as lobbing to get these synthetic poisons banned perhaps we could promote and make fashionable again the traditional anti-flea treatment for both pets and humans. The herb Pennyroyal is perhaps the best know and was stuffed into hay mattresses etc. but there is also cedar oils and pellets of its wood and basil, citronella, clove, lavender, lemongrass, etc.

For home gardeners there are effective and bio-degradable alternatives to the nicotinamides type insecticides. In the old days gardeners would seep cigarette butts and/or pyrethrum plants (which is a type of chrysanthemum) in a bucket of water and spay that. Filter it first through a coffee filter or some such so it doesn't block up the spray nozzle.

One glaring problem that needs to be outlawed and prevented across ‘all’ regulatory agencies, are the ‘revolving doors.’ It is rife amongst heads of departments in these agencies to be persuaded (bribed) with promises of being rewarded with higher paid positions in the very industries which they are supposed to be regulating if they decide in favour of the industry wishes. We need to get together, as all regulators in all western countries have now been captured by corporate interests. Even in healthcare, our agencies are more protective of the financial health of the Pharmaceutical Healthcare Industrial Complex than they are of our health.

We must ban neonics but I disagree with your ideas about taxing sugar on food. If you tax sugar then it is simply replaced with artificial sweeteners which are much, much more damaging to human health. Ultra processed foods are the reason for the public health crisis not natural sugar. After the tax on fizzy drinks I can now not find a single fizzy drink like lemonade on a supermarket shelf that does not contain aspartame or other such horrific artificial chemical.

Saw sugar beet, and owning horses I clicked on this. Glad I did. So years ago I had a chat with a chemist about a chemical that was in a new treatment for horses to keep biting flies away. We got talking about permethrin and he was horrified when I told him this was in a product cleared for use in all cattle. Farmers told to shave a strip along the cows spine and pour a ‘measured’ dose along the shaved area. He asked if it was washed off, I told him no, and they can have multiple treatments. In fact when he told me it was a nerve toxin I read up a bit about it and found that some countries wouldn’t give farmers their subsidies if they refused to use it and many were not happy at all about having to use this. It was and is still used in uk for cattle, but I don’t know what, if any pressure is put on farmers to use this in uk. Vets told farmers its use on cattle was also good to keep the population of flies down.in that area. I don’t know if used much on sheep and pigs, but definitely cows.

If a crop cannot be grown without environmental damages beyond the field shouldn’t be grown. Import it instead from countries who don’t need such chemicals and poison.

Another little Brexit bonus.

Thank you for this information Dr Goulson but I fear it will now give me sleepless nights. I have 6 cats and 2 dogs and used diatomaceous earth to help with flea control, but recently had issues with flea allergies in some of my pets. These animals needed steroids to calm their skin issues then the vet advised regular treatment with a spot- on ,which as a concerned pet owner I complied with. Even with spot on Front-Line the issues continued. So Advocate was prescribed. The vet said she had come across other owners having issues with fleas even when Front-Line was used , this is one of the GSL spot -ons whereas Advocate is vet issue only ,and I think, a combination of chemicals. It is a frightening thought that ever more potent chemicals are being needed to control fleas on domestic pets when their toxicity to other insects is so great. I already hot wash dog and cat beds each week and use a steam mop on floors but will have to look at other less toxic means of flea control.

For a boring talk that was very interesting. Thank you!

Not a ramble. Very concerning. Let's hope Labour stops this license for sugar beet, especially now after announcing a drug for obesity. Sugars need to be removed from food. It's been such an unsettling year with regards to the lack of many invertebrates this year.

First there was ddt then lindane which caused cancer etc

Think I’m reading your book at the moment…jungle gardens?

Our vet practice is always trying to sign dogs up to monthly (and lucrative) worm and flea treatment. I've been politely called a negligent owner, but I feel after 55 years of owning Jack Russells I can safely give worm tablets. As to the flea treatment, I always point out the environmental damage and refuse to put poison on him if he hasn't got fleas.

Great video, very informative.

I went to a dung beetle conference at the Yeo Valley headquarters in the summer, a small animal vet gave a presentation about the spot on issues and how it affected river water and the environment. A lot of vets are corporate owned, and they recommend regular treatments of pets. Not good.

Farming really needs to be controlled far more firmly. Have insect populations in Europe recovered at all?

Here’s the response to my email sent earlier today, asking what steps our local MP (now in charge of DEFRA) is taking to prevent British Shugar’s application from being granted: Dear Nat, Thank you for your email regarding neonicotinoids. I can assure you that the Government remains committed to updating existing policies to ban the use of these pesticides. Best wishes, Daniel Zeichner MP Daniel Zeichner Member of Parliament for Cambridge

Thanks

Thank you, Oh dear.

Thanks for this video. We struggle with fleas on our cats all the time. I've never wanted to use the chemical flea treatments and this video has reminded me why. I have always tried to use natural alternatives but without much success. We've kind of accepted we have to live with the fleas, and keep on top of washing and hoovering, but it's hard! And I'm the one in my family who is affected most by the bites, they are a nightmare!

Going back 25 years, I was living in a shared space which obliged me to treat my dog with early generations of spot-on flea treatment, and I observed that the treatment put her off-colour for 3 or 4 days, including some minor loss of limb coordination and other minor symptoms suggesting neuropoisoning. After that I stopped using the products.

Great video, we use 'Flea Guard' yeast tablets for cats and dogs which are effective, re neonics check out John Kemp podcasts episode 76 with Tim Parton, the principle is that healthy plants are resilient to pest and disease, and that intensive agricultural methods are incapable of growing healthy plants! Please also consider that one of the reasons that sugar is so bad for us could be because it is contaminated with neurotoxins and glyphosates... I would argue that contaminated food lacking nutrient density is the main cause of the health crisis

Its even worse than that for the honeybees as commercial beekeepers feed sugar syrup to bees after taking their honey... what's in the sugar? Neonics. 😢

Let me ask you Dr Goulson do the niconic's go into the honey that the bees are making?

Thank you for this critical information..

There's Farmers & there's Harmers. Sadly more Harmers

Thanks for the education. Signed and shared petition ❤

I have found that feeding my dogs raw biologically appropriate food means they are fit and strong, my dogs don’t attract fleas as parasites only attack weakened animals, I would prefer to feed my dogs a diet that keeps them fit and strong.

You don't need to be an 'expert' to use your God given ability to think critically and work out that spraying your food with toxins and then eating them is not a good thing to do.

Diatomaceous Earth is the only solution for fleas and is dirt cheap and is harmless to pets. My dog has not had fleas for 8 years...or worms or anything else...Commercial flea 'treatments' are a veterinary business model...