[View Point] An Unlikely Pairing

As music legend Bob Dylan wrote nearly five decades ago, “The times they are a-changin’.” That’s certainly the case with the pest management industry, where the National Pest Management Association (NPMA) recently announced that its new GreenPro certification program has been endorsed by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the country’s leading environmental groups with more than 1.2 million members and e-activists. There was a time not that long ago when the industry’s leading trade association would have respectfully declined any overtures from the environmental community, understanding that pesticides have long been in the cross-hairs of environmental activists.

So, when Bob Rosenberg got a call from the NRDC following the launch of the association’s QualityPro Green program in September 2008, no one was more surprised than the association’s longtime senior vice president of government affairs, who has butted heads on more than one occasion with the environmental community during his 20 years working on behalf of the industry. “To be honest, we were kind of skeptical,” Rosenberg told PCT (see “Strange Bedfellows,” page 24). The best outcome, Rosenberg hoped, was “they wouldn’t give us a black eye.”

Once the two groups began talking, however, they discovered they had more in common than at first thought when it came to the key elements of the GreenPro program. Once NPMA “beefed up” the auditing portion of the program and NRDC agreed to wave an approved product list requirement — a non-starter for the association — the two groups decided they could work together, resulting in the NRDC’s endorsement of the program. “I truly believe this is a game-changer for the pest management industry,” Rosenberg observed.

Ten years ago groups like the NRDC were considered the enemy, according to former NPMA President Mike Rottler. Through “open dialogue” they’re starting to “understand us better” and the value the industry brings to consumers, Rottler told PCT. “If we can find some common ground we end up helping the consumer and doing a better job for the environment, so maybe we do need each other.”

I’m hopeful that NPMA’s burgeoning relationship with the NRDC will bear positive fruit for the industry in the months and years ahead, but if I’m being totally honest I’m also a bit skeptical. Perhaps it’s the journalist in me. Old lessons die hard. For too many PMPs, the environmental community is viewed as the land of “tree huggers” whose ultimate goal is to eliminate the use of all pesticides. For too many environmental organizations the pest control industry is viewed through the prism of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” a book that launched the environmental movement, but sullied the reputation of pesticides for generations.

What some people on both sides of this potentially divisive issue too often forget, however, is that the pest control industry of 2009 is not the pest control industry of 1962, when “Silent Spring” topped The New York Times non-fiction best seller list. In the 47 years since publication of the book, basic manufacturers have developed generation after generation of cutting-edge pesticides that are more effective at lower dose rates than previous generations of chemistry. During those same years the industry has lost some of its most valuable and effective tools — tools that in the hands of pest management professionals represent little risk to the public — in part because of vocal opposition from the environmental community.

Is the NRDC and NPMA’s growing relationship the first step in the two organizations — and the constituencies they represent — gaining a better understanding of one another? Perhaps. But I’m going to reserve judgment until that inevitable day when the interests of the NRDC are in conflict with the interests of the National Pest Management Association. Only then will we have a true gauge of how far we’ve come in understanding — and appreciating — one another’s point of view when it comes to our respective positions on the role of pesticides in protecting the public’s health, property and the environment.

The author is publisher of PCT magazine.