IPM Institute News: IPM in the Marketplace
July 2004
Volume 5 Issue No. 3
Contents
I. First Five IPM STAR School
Systems Certified
II.
From
the Field: Innovative Marketing Efforts Create Demand for
Certified Farmers
III.
IPM
Institute Teams Up with University
of Florida
and the Woody Ornamentals
Industry on IPM Assessment Tool
IV. Awards to
Honor Best at Integrated Pest Management: 2004 Gold Medal IPM
Partner Award Finalists Announced
V. About the IPM Institute and IPM in the
Marketplace
I. First
Five
IPM
STAR
School
Systems Certified
What’s
it like to be under an IPM microscope?
Since the start of the year, fourteen school systems have
placed themselves in just that position by volunteering to
participate in the new IPM STAR certification program.
Goals
for the program include determining where each school system stands
on the IPM continuum, identifying opportunities for improvement,
and recognizing those school systems that meet a high, measurable
standard for IPM performance. Certification
must be renewed every three years, so the program works to help
ensure IPM continuity through staff changes, budget cuts or other
potential threats.
The
certification process includes an on-site evaluation by an IPM
professional. The evaluator
interviews relevant staff, including the IPM coordinator,
buildings and grounds maintenance leads and any outside firms
providing pest control and landscape maintenance services.
The interviewer records information on the history of the
IPM program, staff training and experience, conformance to state
regulations, pesticide applicator licensing, posting and
notification policies and other details.
Pesticide application records and pest sighting logs are
also examined to determine the extent of pest problems and
justification for pesticide applications.
The
evaluator then inspects pesticide storage facilities, application
equipment, and representative school facilities.
Pest-prone areas including kitchens, food storage,
mechanical rooms, locker rooms and custodial closets are singled
out for special attention. “The
idea is to spot check facilities, not to conduct an exhaustive
inspection,” reports Dr. Thomas Green, IPM Institute president
and lead evaluator. “If
we find unresolved pest problems, we may recommend that a
comprehensive inspection be done of all school facilities by a
qualified professional, to identify and make recommendations to
correct pest-conducive conditions.
Within
four weeks after the on-site visit, the school system receives a
set of interim reports, including the scored evaluation, a pest
control product hazard analysis, a descriptive profile of the
system’s IPM program, and a cover letter with recommendations.
“The
pest control product evaluation is very unique,” says Green.
“We list each product, including chemical pesticides,
traps and attractants, and note if the product includes hazards
such as acute toxicity, carcinogenicity, developmental or
reproductive toxicity, groundwater contamination potential for
products used outdoors, or physical hazards such as dust or
aerosol formulations. We
use recognized authorities including US EPA, the state of
California
, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer to identify
hazards for each product and active ingredient.
School administrators are often unaware of these potential
hazards or of less hazardous options we suggest in our
recommendations.”
The
school system then has an opportunity to review the reports for
accuracy and to provide an update on any changes or improvements
that have occurred since the audit.
In every case, the school has made immediate improvements
in response to the audit or interim reports, and improved their
score accordingly, before the final reports are issued and the
certification is granted.
Deficiencies
that have been corrected as a result of the audit process include
removal of unauthorized pesticides from custodial closets or other
locations, discontinuing calendar-based pesticide applications to
athletic fields and transitioning to less hazardous pest control
options. For example,
pelleted rodenticides can be replaced with bait-block formulations
used in enclosed, tamper resistant bait stations.
Bait blocks are much less likely to be moved by rodents to
areas where school children might come in contact with the active
ingredient.
The
certification audit was developed from the IPM
Standards for Schools, a compendium of more than 250 IPM
practices and 750 resources for schools and childcare facilities.
The IPM Standards and
the new audit form are available for downloading at www.ipminstitute.org.
To
date, public school systems in New York City; Newton,
Massachusetts; Kyrene, Arizona; Anne Arundel County, Maryland; and
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania have successfully completed the
evaluation and been awarded the certification.
An additional six school systems are in progress, with
another three scheduled for evaluations later this summer.
Funding for the first ten school systems was provided by a
grant from the US EPA Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program
and the National Foundation for IPM Education.
School
IPM programs operated by Extension specialists at Auburn
University, University of Arizona, Washington State University and
Cornell are currently using elements of the IPM
Standards or the IPM STAR program in school systems in their
states.
In
the process of completing these initial certifications, the
Institute is training new evaluators around the country, including
Extension staff. “Our
goal is to end up with a certification program that schools adopt
as an effective means of continuing education,” reports Green.
“We will have trained evaluators in every state who can
use the process as a tool in their work with school systems, both
to encourage continual improvement and to recognize and reward
those who are working extremely hard, often very much behind the
scenes, to reduce both pest and pesticide risks in schools.”
Once
the process is successfully completed, IPM players emerge from
under the microscope and into the spotlight.
The certification is typically awarded with presentation of
the certificate and “perpetual” plaque at a press conference,
board meeting or other event to maximize public exposure to IPM.
Look
for the program to expand to pest management and landscape service
companies soon. An IPM STAR
audit for pest management professional services has already been
tested with five companies, and will be launched in the fall of
2004.
II.
From
the Field: Innovative Marketing Efforts Create Demand for
Certified Farmers
Scott Exo, executive
director for Food Alliance does, in his words, “what everybody
else doesn’t do.” And
these days, that includes exploring techniques
to earn more money for certified farmers.
Since Exo was promoted
to director of this Portland-based sustainable label last December, he has focused on bringing more
benefits to farmers by building market-side relationships with
both likely and unlikely partners. Exo moved to the director position after four years with
the Food Alliance as Northwest Regional Director.
These new
relationships include traditional partnerships between ecolabels
and grocers, as well as innovative approaches to food service
providers, restaurants and fast food chains.
Currently, Exo works
with smaller grocery stores and chains to help them differentiate
their businesses from larger chains. “One of the things that’s happening in the grocery
industry is that there’s a looming fear of very large grocery
chains threatening smaller independents,” Exo says.
“The Food Alliance helps smaller stores separate
themselves from large chains by offering sustainably, regionally
grown food.”
Today about 70 stores
in the Northwest and 58 in the Midwest actively promote Food Alliance certified
products, and hundreds of others carry products with the Food
Alliance label. However,
Exo says sales of Food Alliance products to food service providers
and restaurants are starting to eclipse sales in grocery stores.
Food Alliance
has recently developed key relationships with Bon Appétit and
Aramark, companies that provide food for corporate dining halls
and college campuses in the Northwest.
Food Alliance Midwest, the Minneapolis-based Food Alliance
affiliate, works with Sodexho Campus Services, a food service
provider for universities, as well as several Midwestern
distributors, including Roots & Fruits, Malat Produce, J&J
Distributing, and Russ Davis Wholesale.
Exo explains that
these partnerships with food service providers have allowed larger
producers to benefit from their Food Alliance certification.
“Relationships with food service companies have opened up a
whole new level of demand to medium and large family producers who
can’t take advantage of specialty CSAs and farmers markets.”
In addition to
increasing demand for sustainably grown food products, Exo says
food service companies benefit by being able to easily and
honestly answer questions about the quality of their product. On college campuses, Exo reports many students are pleased
to see their food service providers using sustainably and
regionally grown food.
“College is the
first time students go off and formulate their own values about
food and food choices and start questioning and relating parts of
their academic experience to those food choices,” says Exo.
Exo is also working to
strengthen partnerships between Food Alliance and some 35 partner
restaurants in the
Pacific Northwest. Exo says these
partnerships were started in the Portland
metro area a few years ago. “Restaurants
sign up and agree to source certified products and figure out ways
within their marketing to communicate to their customers.”
Many of the restaurants involved have also come up with
creative ways to show their support for sustainable agriculture
including hosting fund-raising events for Food Alliance.
Food Alliance
recently teamed up with fast food chain Burgerville to offer Food
Alliance-certified fast food. Exo explains, “Burgervilles serves burgers and fries, but
their brand is very much about local and regionally grown products
including berry shakes and Walla Walla
onion rings in season.”
Exo approached
Burgerville about using local and regional products that also meet
environmental and social sustainability criteria. Burgerville soon became a restaurant partner using Food
Alliance certified beef. Exo
says their partnership created a lot of positive media, and
Burgerville’s revenue increased dramatically over a three-month
period.
According to Exo, Food
Alliance and the 39 Burgerville restaurants hope to expand the
number of certified products in the future.
“I do see this as a new trend. We’re laying plans to expand the restaurant program to Seattle, and I think the
Midwest
will replicate the program within the next year.”
Since Food Alliance
started in 1994, new marketing techniques have changed the way
they work. “We are a
bit more market savvy. We
have more market relationships. We can introduce people who have product to people who want
product."
Food Alliance
currently has about 180 certified growers who certify a wide
variety of products from tree fruits to row crops to dairy and
meats. Surveys
indicate growers appreciate the access to new markets and usually
see an increase in market share due to the label.
“There’s more
demand than ever,” reports Exo. “Now’s a great time for growers to get certified.”
One of the main
challenges Food Alliance currently faces is sourcing enough
product to meet the recent explosion in demand. Exo says limited staff and time make it difficult to get
enough qualified growers on the roster.
Interested growers in
the Pacific Northwest
should contact Heather Saam.
Interested
Midwest
growers should contact
Ray Kirsch, certification coordinator for Food Alliance
Midwest. For more
information on Food Alliance, visit http://www.foodalliance.org.
III.
IPM
Institute Teams Up with University
of Florida
and the Woody Ornamentals
Industry on IPM Assessment Tool
How can woody
ornamentals producers assess their IPM performance? A recently completed two-year project achieved its goal of
creating a grower self-assessment to encourage reduced risk
practices.
Many IPM
practices are available to producers of trees, shrubs and other
woody perennials to improve product quality, optimize input use,
and minimize impacts on human health and the environment. Until now, however, there has not been a ready way for
producers to measure the number of IPM techniques they have put in
place versus those available to them.
The new
assessment includes more than fifty IPM practices addressing
knowledge and training, monitoring and inspection, action
thresholds, and long-term, preventative solutions to pest
problems. Each
practice is ranked for importance, including “must haves,” and
low, moderate and high priorities. The ranking prioritizes those practices with the greatest
potential to reduce risks. Also
included are two dozen nutrient and irrigation “Best Management
Practices,” designed to improve performance and reduce impacts.
The IPM
assessment for woody ornamentals was created by a diverse
workgroup of Florida
producers, buyers, University
of
Florida
researchers and extension staff, along with representatives from
the IPM Institute. The
workgroup reviewed environmental issues facing the industry,
examined existing assessment models for other crops, collected IPM
resources for woody ornamentals from multiple states, brainstormed
a list of available IPM practices and reworked the list multiple
times for clarity, do-ability and potential for reducing risks. Listening sessions with grower groups from around the state
were used to identify grower needs and refine the tool to make it
most useful.
Ongoing work
includes development of a certification program based on the
assessment which will be made available on a voluntary basis to
producers by the IPM Institute. The industry, consumers, IPM Florida and additional
University
of
Florida
and IFAS faculty members will continue in advisory roles. This certification will provide credible marketplace
recognition to Florida
woody ornamentals that meet a high standard for IPM.
IPM certification
can provide a host of potential benefits, including ongoing grower
education, price premiums, access to new markets, preservation of
existing markets, enhanced neighbor and community relations and
reduced liability through improved management of potential
hazards.
This new product
joins a growing list of crop and region-specific IPM measurement
tools created for grower self-assessment and for certification
purposes. You’ll
find links to many of these tools and programs at www.ipminstitute.org/links.htm. A link to the new woody ornamentals assessment will be
added this summer.
The project was
funded by the US EPA Pesticide
Environmental Stewardship Program. The IPM tool will be available on the web soon, for any
producer to use to evaluate their operation.
IV. Awards
to Honor Best at Integrated Pest Management: 2004 Gold Medal
IPM Partner Award Finalists Announced
Atlanta, July 14,
2004 – Orkin Commercial Services, one of the largest providers
of commercial pest management services in North America, is
honoring top practitioners of Integrated Pest Management (IPM).
The company today announced its first-ever Gold Medal IPM
Partner Awards – co-presented by The IPM Institute of North
America and Today’s Facility Manager magazine – and the
nine facilities selected as finalists for the award.
IPM is an
approach to pest management that stresses all available methods of
control, with an emphasis on minimizing pesticide use.
It has slowly become the standard in commercial pest
control over the past few decades, as environmental and
food-safety concerns have shifted the pest management industry
away from pesticide sprays.
The Gold Medal
IPM Partner Awards honor companies that have shown the greatest
dedication to making IPM work at their sites, through vigilant
sanitation, thorough pest documentation, prompt adherence to
structural pest-management recommendations and even staff
participation in IPM training sessions.
“We often tell
our commercial customers that Integrated Pest Management works
best if it is a true partnership between their staff and ours,”
says Orkin President and Chief Operating Officer Glen Rollins.
“Our new awards program is a way for us to show our
appreciation to the facilities we serve that have gone the extra
mile to make their IPM programs successful.”
The
finalists were selected from an elite group that employs Orkin’s
most rigorous service offering, called Gold Medal Protection,
which features heavy emphasis on quality assurance and
documentation.
“By
accepting nominations from this top tier group, we are focusing on
the ‘best of the best,’” says Rollins.
The 2004 Gold
Medal IPM Partner Award finalists are:
·
The Cheesecake Factory (Agoura Hills, Calif.)
– Cheesecake-production facility for The Cheesecake Factory
restaurants.
·
Inland Paperboard and Packaging (Marion,
Ohio) – Manufacturing facility for packaging, cartons and
sales/marketing displays.
·
Monsanto Company (Chesterfield, Mo.) –
Production facility for bio-engineered agricultural seed.
·
NFI Interactive Logistics (Bolingbrook, Ill.)
– Distribution center for Trader Joe’s, an organic grocery
store chain.
·
Phoenix Ice Cream (Phoenix, Ariz.) – Ice
cream manufacturing plant.
·
Safeway Milk (Denver, Colo.) –
Milk-processing plant for the Safeway grocery chain’s
private-label milk.
·
Sara Lee Coffee & Tea (Suffolk, Va.) –
Global supplier of coffee, tea and coffee-making systems.
·
Saratoga Specialties (Elmhurst, Ill.) –
Spice and ingredient manufacturer.
·
Tree of Life (Bloomington, Ind.) – The
largest natural and specialty food distributor in North America.
“For these
sensitive facilities, an IPM program that reduces the need for
pesticides is critical to quality assurance,” says Dr. Thomas
Green, President of the IPM Institute of North America, Inc.
“All of the finalists practice IPM at a very high level
and they all should be proud.”
Judges for the
2004 Gold Medal IPM Partner Awards include:
·
Austin Frishman, Ph.D., B.C.E., Founder and
President of AMF Pest Management Services, Inc.;
·
Thomas A. Green, Ph.D., President of the IPM
Institute of North America, Inc.;
·
Frank Meek, B.C.E., Technical Director, Orkin, Inc.;
·
Heidi Schwartz, Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher of Today’s
Facility Manager magazine, read by more than 50,000
facility executives; and
·
Zia Siddiqi, Ph.D., B.C.E., Director of Quality
Assurance, Orkin, Inc.
Award
winners will be announced
in September, and Orkin will conduct award presentations on-site
at the winning facilities. Case
studies on each of the winners will be posted on Orkin Commercial
Services’ new Web site, Orkin.com/commercial.
“Facility
managers are an innovative group of professionals who consider IPM
an important issue,” said Heidi Schwartz, Editor-in-Chief of Today’s
Facility Manager. “The
2004 Gold Medal IPM Awards applaud the profession and its uncanny
ability to resolve even the most challenging facility issues.”
About Orkin
Founded
in 1901, Atlanta-based Orkin, Inc. is an industry leader in
essential pest control services and protection against termite
damage, rodents and insects in North America.
With more than 400 locations, Orkin’s almost 8,000
employees in the United States and Canada serve approximately 1.7
million customers. Orkin
is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rollins, Inc., which is traded on
the New York Stock Exchange (ROL).
Learn more about Orkin by visiting www.orkin.com
and www.rollins.com.
Media
Contact:
Randall
Kirsch, (404) 724-2516, Email
V. About the IPM Institute and IPM Institute
News
The
IPM Institute of North America, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt,
non-profit organization formed in 1998 to promote and support
marketplace recognition for goods and service providers who meet
high standards for IPM. Consumer
support for IPM provides a powerful incentive for increasing IPM
adoption in agriculture and communities!
The
IPM Institute provides services to ecolabel programs including IPM
research, standards development, program management and inspector
training and certification. The
Institute operates certification programs for IPM professionals,
schools and other organizations and IPM products and services.
IPM in the Marketplace is
produced and distributed periodically with support from IPM
Institute members. For
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may be reproduced and/or distributed for non-commercial purposes
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