Last updated: 16 May 2018

Just a few weeks ago, more than 600,000 SumOfUs members like you helped put corporate power in its place.

Your actions and the work of our partners forced the EU to vote for a near-complete ban on three bee-harming pesticides developed by corporate giants Bayer and Syngenta!

Incredible isn’t it? Now with this momentum we’re demanding that Australia follow suit and we’re asking that you join us.

Bayer and Syngenta want to soak our food supply with these pesticides so they can make a quick buck.

But without bees, we can’t feed ourselves: bees pollinate a third of the food you and I eat.

The pesticides banned in the EU belong to a category of chemicals called neonicotinoids. Scientists have been warning us for years that neonics are a key culprit behind the global bee die-off.

The active neurotoxins inside the chemicals scramble bees' ability to navigate. They are also harmful to bees’ immune systems, making them more vulnerable to infections that are spreading through bee populations like wildfire in many parts of the world.

Worried beekeepers, farmers, and people like you are speaking out for bees to be put before corporate interests. And the forces of people power are working.

Just this year, over 30,000 SumOfUs members in Australia scored a win: by raising the alarm, we got all major Australian retailers to agree to phase out neonics they stock. In North America, our community also convinced the biggest hardware stores to do the same.

Together, we also forced the French government to become the first country to decide to ban neonics.

We need strong laws and regulations in Australia to stop big corporations like Bayer and Syngenta from threatening bees in Australia for the sake of profit.

Australia’s pesticides regulator, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA), has said it is not planning to review the use of neonics in Australia. In light of the EU’s bold ban to protect the bees, we ask that the regulator urgently reconsider.

Thankfully the full-fledged crisis that has swept through bee populations in the rest of the world hasn’t yet hit Australia in quite the same way. But we can’t afford to be complacent.

That’s why it’s so important that we do everything we can now to protect bees in Australia so we don’t end up facing the mass die-offs seen in other parts of the world.

We need your help to get tough on our regulators to do the right thing.

Join us -- call on our Government to ban neonics in Australia now.

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