COAG Satisfied with the recognition of the apiculture like key sector for the environmental conservation

The Plenary of the European Parliament (PE) approves today a proposal of Report on the 'Health of the bees melíferas and the challenges of the sector apícola' that contains also the recommendations and suggestions realised/realized by the Commission of Environment, Public Health and Alimentary Security of the PE. The proposal collects a series of measures in front of the document presented by the Commission in December of 2010 and to the recommendations that approved the Council of Ministers of Agriculture in June of 2011 on this sector.

Between the requests requested by the PE to the Commission stand out the promotion of new technicians of integrated management of plaguicidas and the development of veterinary medicines for the current pathogenic agents that affect to the bees, especially against 'Varroa destroyer', the inclusion of the apiculture in the finance of the European veterinary politics and the control of the illnesses of exotic parasites of the pertinent bees of third countries.

Besides, the PE asks to the Commission and to the Council that keep and strengthen the supports to the apiculture in the new Agricultural Politics Common (PAC) further of 2013, by means of greater financial resources in the current National Programs Apícolas, helps in the diet of direct helps of the first pillar and in the measures agroambientales of rural development.

The European parliament estimates that the sector apícola forms integral part of the European agriculture providing primary or complementary income to more than 600.000 beekeepers of the EU, loaning some vital services to the agriculture through the pollination and contributing to the maintenance of the biodiversidad. And it is that it calculates that a 84 % of the vegetal species and a 76 % of the alimentary production in Europe depend on the pollination of the bees. Besides, the apiculture also loans an important service to the ecosystems through the pollination when keeping the genetic diversity of the plants and the ecological balance, forming part of the agricultural heritage European and of the traditional national.

The mortandad and loss of colonies of precise bees a system of surveillance harmonised/harmonized to level of all the EU to know the scope of this grave problem and an independent investigation on the impact that at present have the toxic phytosanitary products on the bees. Has to take into account the specific needs of the sector apícola in the review of the veterinary politics European that will present the Commission in 2012 on animal health. Likewise, it is necessary to achieve a greater availability of effective veterinary medicines contras the illnesses of the bees, centring/centering the efforts in the fight and control of the varroasis, when being a parasite that has a big capacity to generate resistances.

For the manager of the sector apícola of COAG, José Luis González, this political answer of the PE goes to be determinante to recognise/recognize “to the European beekeepers like indispensable guardians of the environment and the biodiversidad in the EU” and also so that the administrations assume “that the apiculture is a sector strategic grazier to guarantee the pollination in the crops and in the half natural”.