Checking the Label & Update on the Bee Population

Checking the Label & Update on the Bee Population. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report. When we go to the grocery store we are notorious label readers. I want to know what is in it and where it came from. But according to Greg Jaffe, Director of the Project on Biotechnology for the Center for Science in the Public Interest there are those that really don't care. JAFFE: Consumers who want to know, who want to go that extra distance to find out more about where their food came from can get that information fairly easily and that information is honest and factual, not a beating around the bush kind of thing. And so there are many consumers who will go to the store and don't want to know. They just want to be able to pick out their piece of fruit or buy their TV dinner and not know where it came from and that's fine for them and those are people who probably aren't going to read information on the label. Researchers have a pair of new suspects in the mysterious collapse of honey bee colonies across the country. The widespread damage to the bees has caused concern because the insects are needed to pollinate scores of crops. Researchers say samples collected from hives affected by the syndrome indicated the presence of a virus as well as a fungus. The two pathogens were not found in bee colonies not affected by the syndrome, called colony collapse disorder or CCD. The new study said the suspect virus is insect iridescent virus, which is similar to a virus first reported in India 20 years ago, as well as a virus found in moths. Now here's today's Washington Grange Report. (GRANGE) That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.