Robert's Rants
Robert's Rants
A personal blog on the Canadian pesticide industry and other pet peeves and interests

A Call to Action – Part One! (Canadian Rodenticide re-evaluation decision)

The Industry needs your help as Professional Pest Managers.

You are all aware of the PMRA’s actions on the rodenticide re-evaluation decision, and the effects on domestic and commercial baits.  But there is one part of the decision we as an Industry should try to have reversed, and that is the limiting use of difethialone (DFN) baits for indoor use only, completing eliminating the opportunity to use outdoors.  The names more familiar to you would be Generation and FirstStrike.

The PMRA has lumped this bait into the same category as brodificoum, based on arbitrary levels set in one or two chemical properties.

What was ignored was the fact the bait is used at 50%, or half the rate, of brodificoum, and the properties of the products are much closer to bromodialone than brodificoum.  But this and other factors must have taken into account by the EPA, as PMP’s are still allowed to use DFN products both indoors and out in the States.

So what else does the current decision mean and what impact can it have?

There is now only one second generation anticoagulant available for outdoors.  And what, after  5  – 10 years of using one bait for outdoors, will we build up a resistant population of rodents????  Possible???  Who knows, but why take the risk.  And do we want to chance ruining another great active by overuse, leaving Canada with no effective bait for outdoors, where you need to stop infestations from coming inside?

The second issue is bait shyness, which we all know develops after continual use and feeding.  This will also impact choices…leaving us with products that aren’t any where near as effective.

So what do you need to do to help? 

Read part 2!

Rodenticide re-evaluation continued

I have just completed the Gardex Positioning Paper on how we are working with the new regulations coming from PMRA on rodenticides, including the use of bait stations.  This is available by sending an email to the Ontario office listed on our contact page.  Customers will all receive a copy in the next few weeks.

Gardex is fully behind these regulations as we have always contended that some things in the Industry are better left to professionals.  The availability of the Domestic registered products are the key focus of this initiative, but there is impact on the Commercial products as far as use sites and new requirements that have been added to the product labels approved by PMRA.

If you are a professional pest control operator, or agriculturalist (farmer) still the best thing is to read and follow the label!

When completing our review of the regulations, and subsequent strategy, I found it a bit more onerous than expected.  But you can still boil down the facts, plus using some common sense, understand what the new requirements actually mean and what is required by users of rodenticide products.