Earlier today, Bluestem reported about efforts to amend the Legacy Omnibus funding bill to better protect pollinators in our post Creating a pollinator-friendly legacy: Kahn & Schultz offer HF303 monarch & bee amendments.
As we noted earlier, amendments were filed to amend both amendments. The lesser effort--amending language in an amendment about monarch butterfly habitat--passed.
But something remarkable happened when Duluth DFL freshman representative Jennifer Schultz rose to speak about her amendment: she called the bluff of Representative Paul Torkelson:
Here's the transcript:
This amendment does not allow the use of pesticides lethal to pollinators on land acquired with Legacy funds.
Like I said before, it's very important that we protect our pollinators. Over eighty percent of crops, plants, flowering plants are pollinated and need pollination, which is important for our food supply.
The biggest environmental concern when Americans are polled, after water, are pollinators, so people care about this issue.
Unfortunately Representative Torkelson has amended this amendment, and in that amendment, they drastically changed it, to protect chemical companies, the company that produced the pesticide lethal to pollinators like neonicotinoids. And these corporations are outside the US, countries like Germany and Switzerland.
So again, this is another example the majority in this House representing ther interests of corporations over the interests of Minnesotans.
So, unfortunately, I'm going to withdraw this amendment because of Representative Torkelson's secondary amendment. Thank you.
Later, as the larger bill was being discussed before passage, Torkelson claimed his amendment to the amendment would have actually expanded pollinator protection.
However, since he made no move to suspend the rules and establish his own glorious bee-loving language on its own, Bluestem is left to conclude that the hive had swarmed and left the hollow shell of the Hanska Republican's rhetoric.
The larger Omnibus Legacy Finance Bill, HF303, passed on 97-31 vote. Readers can watch the entire debate on the bill here on YouTube.
Photo: Some honeybees gathering pollen on corn tassels.
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