|
|
Welcome!
What is the 2007 Workshop?
Come join your colleagues from across
North America at the 2007 North American Pesticide Applicator
Certification and Safety Education Workshop. This biennial Workshop
will present ways to increase the levels of safety, competency, and
security for pesticide applicators and workers. Learn how to get greater
impact from your program, discuss innovative educational and regulatory
tools and projects, hear about new compliance issues, get ideas on
unique training methods, and exchange information on the needs, trends,
and successes in our programs.
Who should attend?
Any person involved with
the training and education of pesticide applicators, registered
technicians, and homeowners using pesticides, and those involved in the
certification of applicators (testing, licensing) and enforcing
pesticide-use regulations.
-
University pesticide coordinators and educators
-
County
Extension educators
-
IPM
coordinators and educators
-
Master
Gardener educators
-
Territory and tribal pesticide coordinators and educators
-
Territory and tribal regulators
-
State
and provincial certification managers and staff
-
EPA
regional certification & training coordinators
-
EPA and
USDA cooperators
-
Federal
agency cooperators (e.g., APHIS; ARS; DOD; WS; FS)
-
Agriculture and non-agriculture organizations and associations
representatives
-
Industry
government affairs representatives
-
International partners (Canada, Mexico)
Why should you attend?
In the infant years of the
states’ certification and training programs, meetings such as the
National Workshop were not much more than a materials exchange program.
Every state was in desperate need of new and updated pesticide
educational materials to help train the hundreds-of-thousands of
applicators nationwide who now needed to be certified to carry out their
business. For gray-haired educators and regulators, those years were
remembered as ones of learning and coping, interjected with moments of
panic.
As the program grew and the success
of the certification and training effort became more evident and known,
other issues were gradually added -- some by regulation, some were
self-inflicted: water quality, worker protection standard, endangered
species, school IPM, health practitioners, and homeowner education. At
the same time, the complexity of the program increased by the sheer
number of certification categories, stricter regulations, reciprocity
issues across state lines, heightened concerns of pesticide exposure to
human health, and safeguarding our food supply. On top of all this,
recent concerns about biosecurity and the future impact of international
efforts (e.g., global harmonization) brings the pot to a full boil.
Today, the maturity and breadth of
the program has put it at an interesting crossroad. With a full plate
and diminishing resources, how can we continue to survive and expand (or
maintain) our productivity? Limelight cases of pesticide use abuse
(e.g., methyl parathion applications inside homes) depict our
vulnerability. Was this misapplication an anomaly, or do we need to beef
up our enforcement strategy further still? Over the past half-a-dozen
years, the Certification and Training Assessment Group (CTAG) has
tackled issues that will bring tighter scrutiny and conduct to our
program and, as a result, will dramatically affect the way we do
business.
So, why should you attend the 2007
Workshop? Maybe the question would be better phrased by asking, "Why
wouldn’t you attend"?
Revisit
The
2005 Workshop, Madison, WI
top
|
