ASK THE BUGMAN: State lags behind in many areas of pest management

........................................................................................................................................................................................

People ask me if I have an agenda against the pest control industry. No, I dont. I have been associated with it for 44 years. I have a problem with many ways it is regulated or not regulated and how that affects everyone. I will talk about New Mexico as different states have different regulations. New Mexico is way behind in many areas of pest management.

Richard Fagerlund.

Pest control applicators have to be licensed in a number of different categories in order to perform many pest control practices. For instance, they need a separate license for structural pest control, basically treating homes. They need a separate category for mouse control (vertebrate pest control). They need a license to treat trees, a license for using herbicides, for termite control, and many others. If someone has eight categories on his license, all he/she needs to do is get four hours of certified education units (CEUs) in any one category and they are automatically re-certified in all of their categories, with the exception of termites. This is ridiculous.

Someone can come to your home and treat for rodents when they havent been to a rodent class in years. They can go to a herbicide class and get re-certified in rodent control. Point of fact: I am certified in eight categories, including herbicides, fumigation and forest pest control. I havent been to any classes in those three categories in 30 years, but I am still certified in the state of New Mexico to practice them.

Only classes available

I do study these areas and know how to do them, but I only go to structural pest control classes as they are basically the only ones available. When I mentioned this to the director of pesticides at the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, she said that most pest control operators learn their categories and are qualified. If that is true, why require any CEUs? In fact, there are not enough classes in all the categories for the pest people to go to. The NMDA doesnt conduct the classes, but it should since it is operating on taxpayer dollars.

I believe it needs to do away with all these categories and just require pest control operators to get a pesticide license, like a drivers license. This will allow them to use restricted-use pesticides if necessary. Anyone can use general-use pesticides, which are sold to the general public.

Another problem with the present system is that pest control people are only allowed to use products registered as pesticides in New Mexico. They cannot go into your home and use boric acid, peppermint essential oil, grits for ants and many other common household products that are effective in managing pests, because those products arent registered in New Mexico as pesticides. I asked the director about this one time and she said that anything that kills bugs is a pesticide and needs to be registered. Talk about big government.

The only pesticides that should be regulated are restricted-use pesticides because they are potentially dangerous. If a pest control person wants to use safe household products in a customers home, he or she should be allowed to, but isnt.

See the original post here:
ASK THE BUGMAN: State lags behind in many areas of pest management