  는  는  는                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Now, for us now, we're going to burn four pesticides. All pesticides containing malefie and liban. All pesticides containing diazenol. All pesticides containing carbaryl. And all pesticides containing clopirephus and clopirephicinifile in liban is pesticides. In terms of the dilistin of pesticides, we have 310 pesticides in the list of the two pesticides. We think we pesticides that are no longer being manufactured, pesticides whereby the formulations have changed, and pesticides that persons have not imported for the past 10 years, we're going to waste those pesticides. And if in case somebody want and people permit for those 310 pesticides, we're going to ask them for information, latest information and those pesticides. And then we're going to re-register those pesticides. So they can be re-registered? Yes, once you come with the latest information because we have pesticides that we registered in the early 1980s. So in 2023, a lot has happened in terms of the chemistry of those pesticides. It is very important for the board to review the two pesticides and take this very important decision to make sure that the products that persons are using now, the methods, farmers and structural pest control, those pesticides are safe for human health environment and plant health. I really mentioned malathion and I'm coming to Mrs. Leo because at one time I think in your, before giving you all these other malathion, are you still using that? Yes, so we're still using this malathion as one of the pesticides that, you know, for adults I didn't kill in the adult mosquitoes. We don't recognize, like all other pesticides, that there are negative effects of using the pesticide. And of course, at Ministry of Health, the health and safety of our solution public is our number one concern. Hence the reason we're looking at alternative pesticides that we can use to ensure that it is effective at getting rid of the mosquitoes at the adult stages. And it poses as a little harm to the human population. So this is definitely something that we are currently working on. The things malathion is on the listing, it's bound to be on the listing. We're going to ban malathion. So how does that effect to use you as your department? Okay, so like I said, we're going to be looking at alternatives. But we have seen, which is the sad thing, we have seen resistance to some of the other alternatives that are actually out there on the market. So we've had resistance testing done with the Caribbean Public Health Agency. And they saw that resistance, which is one of the reasons that we went back into using malathion. Right? Yes. So we are looking at, because it's been a couple of years since we've used some of these other pesticides. We're looking at if we still have resistance to it. Because if we continue using just malafion, we may develop some resistance to it. So where does that leave us? But malathion has been used for a long, long time. Yes. But I think it's been a couple of years, for a good couple of years, we did not use it at the ministry. We were using other pyre for its other chemicals. It was only in 2015 that we started using malafion again. And we're trying our best to promote not just the alternative pesticides, but we're looking at improving the education, the sensitization that we're doing with our general public. Because if we focus on just the use of chemicals and we don't address the situation at the root, the problem is just going to persist. So in many instances people call us and they ask us to come to do the fogging. But when we go and we do the fogging, it only kills the mosquitoes at the adult stage. It won't get rid of that mosquito that you have in your drama and your containers, your tires and so forth. So we're really trying to encourage persons before we even get to the point where we need to use malafion or we need to go in to spray any chemical in any neighborhood that they're doing what it is that they're supposed to do at their home. So just ten minutes walk around your home and show that you have no mosquito breeding sites, any active or potential mosquito breeding sites. Check your containers, your roof gutter in, get rid of all appliances like your washing machines and your fridges and so forth, tires that can actually collect water and breed mosquitoes. So we're really trying to take home that message before we get to the point of having to use chemicals and pesticides in our environment. It is the last resort. It is the last resort. So we really want to push that proactiveness. You've been involved in that for many years now. I've been involved in it for almost twenty years. I've pesticides as a whole for over thirty-five years. Hearing the delisting, how does that affect you? The delisting of malafion would not affect any area-wide mosquito management program. In my view, simply because of what Charlotte has said, it's just one part of an area-wide mosquito management program. So if one were to look at mosquito management around their homes, it's about understanding the behavior of the mosquito and we go back to simple biology. It's life cycle, complete metamorphosis. So if we get rid of the immature stages we only have to, we would have less adults to worry about. And fogging would only be something that would happen maybe after a week or something after a rain event where you would not have been able to get rid of all mosquito breeding sites or water sources. That's one. You have modular killer films, products you could put on the surface of water that's not being used to prevent the mosquitoes from surviving if they were to lay their eggs in there. Or you have bacteria that can be used, put into the water, the larvae eat it and it kills them. You also have growth regulators that can be used in water sources to actually prevent the larvae from becoming a mosquito. So there are several options out there. But I agree for a challenge. I said the most important thing is to understand those breeding sources and try to reduce them as much as possible. Other than most people come through and your company do other... Yes, we do the wide range of pests. We stress integrated pest management. The average person calls and says, I have a rat, I have cockroaches and they will come and spray. And we educate people that it's not about spraying. It's spraying just like the use of marathons and aerial weapons because management is only one aspect of integrated pest management. So you need to know why you have a problem. If you look at bed bugs, for example, which is something that's around. People talk a lot about it. A bed bug cannot walk into your house. It's a hitchhiker, you carry it into your house. So if you go out, you have to watch where you sit. If you come back home, your clothes where you put it, you need to pay attention to those things. Then the breeding will be placed in your home if you don't take care of them. But we do a wide range of pests. And we stress to every person. You must first inspect and understand what caused the pest problem. So we refer to us for conducive conditions. Food, shelter, water, temperature to a lesser extent. These are what encourage pests to be in the environment. So if I can reduce one of these conducive conditions, like in the case of mosquitoes, if I remove the water source, I reduce the incidence of the pest feeding environment. Do you use inorganic chemicals? We use inorganic chemicals, but we limit the use and we use them in a targeted way. So for example, you can do a crap and crevice treatment, for example, where you put the pesticide directly in where the pest is. So let's say a human cockroach or a bed bug, they are fig motartic, they like to stay in tight spaces. So you can put the pesticide in there. We use a lot of baiting systems. Even in the case of mosquitoes, we use our mosquito trap. We use a baiting system for pest like termites where because of the way they feed and communicate, they transfer information mouth to mouth. And you can have them transfer the pesticide to where you don't know when they are. So that's the modern way of looking at pest management. I'm not just spraying large volumes of pesticide because if I see a termite mound, for example, and I spray it, it doesn't mean I killed off the queen, which means you're weighing. So I rather get the pesticide transferred to her. So if you look at pesticide from an agricultural point of view back in the bad days, you would apply permissive to the soil. And these pesticides would absorb stick to the soil and the pest would get impacted. So if I were to do that in the case of less than two mites, I am basically limiting my application to there and hope that these termites carry the pesticide on the way back. But I have rain and I have other factors that can impact it. So if I use bait, I know for sure I can always come and monitor and look at what's happening and keep on feeding them and eventually take out the population. So right now, your highest percentage of chemicals are organic. Not all of them. We still have inorganic products and we have sleeping minerals like borax that we use. But we use the synthetic products strategically. Not wide scale. If you look at agriculture and you have a crop, you spray the entire crop. But if I have a pest problem because we have to understand the biology, we know where they would be. So we target them in that space. So if you look at the American cockroach, for example, people say they fly into my home. You have two of them that look almost as the same. There's the Australian cockroach, which is a vegetarian. And the American cockroach, which is not. But you'll get it more like in your septic tank area, wet places, right, on their kitchen sink where you might have a leak. So if you say to us, you have that problem, we would come to inspect to figure out exactly where it is and treat accordingly. Okay. So the de-listing chemicals, and those you ban, okay? I remember some years ago, there were lots of chemicals here. I'm sure they part of the de-listing. FAA was involved in trying to get them out. One of the problems is to get chemicals out of your island. After the de-listing, what happens? You're not going to issue important points for these pesticides. Okay. Now, presently, you are persons in possession of small pesticides. So what is going to happen? We're going to phase it out. Since we're not going to issue new important things, it means whenever that what is available on island presently is exhausted, it means that we will be able to manage the stock. Yes, we had a project with the FAO where we collected obsolete stocks from a number of countries in the United Arabian. But what we have to understand is that these things do not... It's not sustainable. It only happens once in a while. So we have not had this program for about five years. And presently, we have a lot of pesticides that are accumulating in a container. We have that. Because when you bring in, as I said, the board is responsible for the regulation of pesticides. So for example, if you bring in on-registered pesticides, those pesticides are confiscated and stored in a container at Union. So definitely we need to have a system in place, not only a system for regularly listing of pesticides, but also disposal is very important for us as well. So there's no mechanism in place for... Presently the Solid Waste Management Authority is not responsible for pesticide disposal. That's a loophole in the legislation. We'll talk about that before our break. You're watching Agriculture to Move. Stay tuned. We'll be back very soon. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Rural Development is placing heavy emphasis on the concept of food security. It's our prosperity, our future. The farmer incentives program of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Rural Development is aimed at reducing the cost of production and promoting food security and accessibility. All farmers, fishers and agro processors who've registered and own a farmer's registration card qualify. These incentives include the percentage reduction of excise tax and import duties for agricultural and fisheries production inputs which are imported. These include approved agricultural products for an approved agricultural project. For example, vehicles, fishing vessels, animals, animal feed, planting materials and other farm inputs. Farmers can apply by completing the application form and submitting with all relevant documents attached. For further information, contact the deputy director of agricultural services at 468-4125. Welcome back to the program agriculture on the mode of course if you are tuning in lately we are talking about pesticides, use of pesticides delisting of pesticides and of course I have people in here who are well apt enough to discuss this activity here. You mentioned FAO and the list of chemicals that are not in use but they are studied union. You mentioned also that solid waste is not responsible How are you going to get those chemicals out of there? Normally you have projects collecting, when you have special projects in the region they collect those pesticides and we are hoping that very soon some project will come up and they will take the seeds out of those pesticides. You hope it's a motor motor. I said originally and locally we do not have the facilities to deal with those pesticides. If I am going to destroy those pesticides you have to export them to France and they will be your countries. That is why we have the facilities to incinerate them to one. So if nothing comes around those chemicals are going to be in a continued union Yes until such project. So in terms of the key of the holding material The pesticides are stored in special containers these places that we are acting in they are stored in special containers so it will take some time before that happens. Okay because I know people are complaining about that the chemical torturing and people are around the area Yes we had a particular pesticide that was very volatile that was stored in the container but so far we have dealt with the issue Nothing happened So you are still waiting for the potential to come around Yes Miss Leon Apart from the control of the musty tool Are there any pace that you are responsible to household pace that you are responsible for control? Okay we also do control of rodents as well So we have a rodent control aspect of our program So the sad thing is that due to limited human resources we are not able to do this type of rodent control in all communities but we focus pretty much on the towns and the cities on the island So in castries we would normally have officers in the city of castries doing rodent control they would be doing the assessments looking at areas where you see higher populations of rats and mice they would be doing the same thing in view for sofray would also be responding to the complaints if we get any complaints in various communities that they have issues with rodents and so forth So we would do that we would also attend to issues with fly infestation rodents we would give the home owner or community members advice on what should be done but we do not have the chemicals for the treatment then we would indicate to them that they may need to use a private pest control company or something So in other words is more educational for the people in the community? Educational yes but we do do treatment we do treatment as well So we would go in like I said we would do the assessments look at where we see in higher populations we look at the signs of infestation we look for the rub marks the tracks we look for evidence of annoying in a particular area and so forth we look at the other factors which would contribute to the proliferation of rats and mice So take for instance rats and mice they need free things to survive food, water and shelter in many instances in our communities in our cities and towns we provide all of those things for the rats So we would go out and we would do the education but we also cannot run away from the level of treatment and beating that we would have to do in these communities and the cities How did you turn a rat? Because I remember at one time there was this chemical beat you wanted to bring in for that called biorats I heard it was called tuber What was the situation? It was not allowed because it was said that one of the active ingredients was someone else Yes and based on that the God took a decision not to bring it in as to where it is right now I don't know So that's what it is right now As he said one of the active ingredients yes it was biopesticide one of the active ingredients in this particular pesticide was salmonella and when he researched salmonella that was in this particular period there was a great possibility that it mutated so what had no choice but to have the huge registration of that particular period and not all the Caribbean countries as well did not register biorats because of that particular reason So what bit do you all use? So what we would use we tend to rotate our bit so we would look at the various active ingredients in the bit because you have fast killing bit you have slow killing bit fast killing bit is not something that you can use for a very long period of time because of course when the rodents are very smart when they see that they are dying because they are eating that particular rodenticide so you have to have a rotation so we may be using contract we may use clear rat we will look at other bits so we may use fast if we see a very high infestation we would use a brand of bit where you have a quicker kill so it's fast killing and then phase it out into a more slow kill bit so we would have that rotation happening at our department maybe some devil applicator I remember when I was a rat when you heard that just run in the same but I noticed the applicators are well armed well clad right and what happened to the public okay so the reason the applicators are well clad is because they are exposed to the chemical at a higher concentration and for a longer period of time so they are more at risk because when we fog people tend to say oh the smell, the smell, the smell what we smell more of is the solvent that we use is the diesel that we smell more of versus the malefion so in that solution you have a much higher volume of diesel in it versus the malefion the other thing is that the fog dissipates very very quickly and again in our our geography the wind always carries it around so it never it never stays in that area confined area for a very long period of time very quickly dissipates and it goes off and again the concentration that the public is exposed to it is so low and it breaks down so quickly that it doesn't pose a risk but of course because of just the nature of malefion we are trying our best to avoid any issues to mitigate any potential risk so this is one of the reasons that we do look for alternatives although we know that we are using it the right way and we are not causing too much harm to our people malefion affect the insects which are very important I remember as a child we used to run chase butterflies in the savannah if you keep on spraying malefion you are not going to have butterflies to chase so it's going to kill the butterflies it's going to kill your dragonflies it's killing your bees and pretty soon if we keep on spraying and spraying and spraying we are not going to be able to eat they they are essentially responsible for that exactly so because of that we are trying our best to only spray for mosquitoes in response to dengue outbreaks on our island what are the issues any problems you face is it to be involved in this pest management business the biggest problem to me is people come to you most times and the problem is out of hand or maybe they have tried certain options and it hasn't worked and they want you to solve it one time and based on my background I seek to, I need to understand the problem because if I just apply a pesticide charlatan made the point about the rodenticides you have what's called acute poisons which is a poison that the rat must it has set in the mouth to die if it doesn't eat it it can get sick but it will remember what it ate and it will not eat that far so it is not up to stream mice which is a much higher and prevent the rodents from eating it anticoagulants and the cold cassifera which will they wouldn't know it's a poison so these can vary based on the generation of pesticide and you can kill us in the last 24 hours for more so you need to know that so if somebody says I have a rodent problem it's not just coming to put bait to get rid of it because if you put the bait in the current situation the rat has a menu it doesn't mean it's going to take so sanitation becomes very important exclusion becomes very important and educating people that we have three rodents in civilization there's the roof rat what you see on trees is different from what you see on the ground and you have the house mouse so you need to know which one you're dealing with and how to bait for them and what you need to do to prevent them from getting into your space so the control is different the control can vary because the rodents are neophobic and also neophobic so you don't trust anything new you feel it means the alpha rats will force the other rats to do stuff for them or they will be aggressively going after them so you need to understand that behavior and know how to deal with it so people need to understand that it's not just about applying a pesticide it's understanding the environment that the pesticide and reacting accordingly by removing food, shelter and water or one of these then applying pesticides well ladies and gentlemen you have come to the end of the program I was about to ask for a final point submission but I was thinking that these two years have one minute less than one minute left so I really want to thank you all for being here Mr. Registrar I hope all the chemicals will be out of solution very soon but we will not let you hold to that and Ms. Leo, thank you for being here of course face cancer game and I wish you all success thank you you've been watching our report on the move thank you for being in the program remember our report on our business keep fresh which is the best thank you again I'm Philip Sidney saying goodbye