Syngenta has urged the EU to withdraw is plans to ban neoincotinoid pesticides for two years, saying that Brussels was wrong to blame them for bee deaths.
Syngenta described the European Food Safety Authority reports on the risk posed to bees by the pesticides as "fundamentally flawed."
"The European Commission has been using this flawed EFSA report to justify proposed restrictions on this technology," Syngenta's chief operating officer, John Atkin, said in a statement.
Last month the EFSA announced its view that such pesticides constituted a risk to bees and other insect pollinators.
Syngenta says that further reviews demonstrate that the EFSA based its assessment on incorrect seed planting rates, between two and four times higher than would be used in modern agriculture. They say that adjusting this reveals a very different picture, as a result of which the company claims that the risks posed to wildlife are very low.
