Introduction to The Fumigation Company

John B. Mueller [00:00:01]:
This podcast supports fumigators in improving safety, compliance and solutions. Always follow the federal fumigant label. State and local laws licensed fumigators are legally responsible for their applications. And now on to All Things fumigation. Out here, we don’t just fight pests, we outsmart them. This is All Things Fumigation, where applied science meets real world grit. I’m John B. Mueller, a fumigator by trade and your guide to the science of fumigation done right. Each month we saddle up with the people, the practices, and the precision it takes to keep facilities safe, compliant, and pest free. Because when you’re in the trenches of pest, you don’t need magic, you need science and maybe a little cowboy spirit. Smarter solutions, safer practices, managed costs. Welcome to All Things Fumigation. All right, welcome to the first episode. Yeah. I’d like to introduce Kayla Schmidt. We’ve brought her back in. For those of you who know Kayla, we’re very excited about that. She’s going to be the moderator for this episode. And if you don’t know Kayla, then she’s been in the market for business for quite a while. She was marketer for a large fumigation company where we worked together quite a bit. We recruited her to lead Food Protection Alliance, a national kind of marketing group for fumigation and food safety pest management companies, where she did a great job. And Kayla has a wonderful and extensive knowledge of fumigation. Fits her to be moderator. So I want to thank you.

Kalah Schmitz [00:02:03]:
Yeah, thank you, John. And thank you for having me back into the industry. I was in it for about 15 to 20 years and learned so much, and I forgot how much I missed it until preparing for this and being here and hearing all the advancements of fumigation. So I appreciate that. And I am, for full disclosure, I am John’s niece. So all I know is fumigation. That’s what we talked about at family dinners. My brother’s a fumigator. But now that I have a family of my own, I have two little boys and I am now the principal at their school. So my life has changed. But it’s exciting to see everything that’s going on in the world of fumigation. So that’s a little bit about me. But, John, for those that don’t know you, can you just give us some history and where all your knowledge came from here?

John B. Mueller [00:02:50]:
Yeah. So I started out as a laborer, a fumigation, a licensed fumigator, you know, from there I started an office in a very High frequency grain fumigation market, became president of that fumigation company and then became interested in food safety, pest management and how that related to fumigation. There’s no better person to teach you how to, how to either not fumigate or limit your fumigation than a fumigator because we’ve seen so many instances of how people got into those situations. So, you know, from there, you know, we started a company called Food Protection Services that was both food safety, pest management and fumigation. And then we sold that company after about seven and a half years to a large national pest management company. And then I stayed on with them for another seven years before I retired. And then after retirement, very excited to start the fumigation company and focus on helping fumigators with safety and compliance and solutions.

Kalah Schmitz [00:03:50]:
Yes. And although those of you out there can’t, you can say it right now, but we may not hear you. I’m sure you’re saying, thank you, John, for doing this. So you gave us the timeline and your time in each area that you, your timeline, but you did not give the actual, like dates or length of time. So can you share with us about how many years you’ve been in this industry?

John B. Mueller [00:04:13]:
There’s a prompt. So I’m a surviving fumigator. I say for 39, a little more than 39 years.

Kalah Schmitz [00:04:19]:
We’re going to round that to 40. So 40 years. You guys are hearing experience and expertise from 40 years of fumigation here. So 40 years of fumigation, you know, the bugs, you know the insects, you’re going to tell us all about that. But how does podcasting fit into all of this?

John B. Mueller [00:04:37]:
Well, I don’t want to pretend that I know everything about fumigation because I don’t. No one does quite a bit, though. I do have the 40 years of experience to share with you. But you all have experience as well. We want to hear from you, listeners you’re going to hear, we’re going to prompt you frequently about that. And as far as podcasting, why do we get into it? It was just that we want to share some of those experiences. We want to focus on safety. This is a very difficult, regulatory compliant, rich industry and we want to look at and focus on some innovative products to help you as well.

Kalah Schmitz [00:05:16]:
Yeah. So podcasting. And then like John said, we want to hear from you. So we want to hear you on with your questions, your concerns, maybe solutions that you’ve had. Maybe John’s going to be speaking about something and you guys have Some input. So we want to hear from you, share with us your challenges. And we’re going to choose one of those as you subscribe or go to LinkedIn. Subscribe to our YouTube podcast, any podcast platform that you use. Visit our LinkedIn page. The Fumigation Company. Go to the website thefumeco.com and then you can also email john@john.muller.com and here he can possibly play one of those on one of the upcoming episodes. So as we hear a little bit about more about fumigation, we still want to get some background and help us understand the thinking behind the fumigation company. As I’ve seen, the tagline and the cut line for the company is delivering scientific solutions to commodity protection and food safety’s most pressing challenges. Can you dive into that a little bit for us, John?

John B. Mueller [00:06:24]:
Yeah, so I think it kind of tees up really the post harvest space. Right. And if we start to understand, understand this community, it’s kind of a two sided community. One feeds the other. And you know, commodity protection managers view fumigants in one way and food safety managers view it in another way.

Kalah Schmitz [00:06:46]:
Not always the same.

John B. Mueller [00:06:47]:
Yeah. And both, whether they like it or not, are potentially dependent on fumigation. And I think understanding that relationship is extremely important. And also, you know, a focus of safety and compliance and innovative solutions is, is part of that. And we want to rebalance the narrative around fumigation. So I think it’s kind of gone off track a little bit and I think that’s kind of what’s motivating me. So, you know, we wanted our website to also be not only the podcast to address some of these nuances, but we wanted the website to be something that if you had a question around fumigation, we want to put some comprehensive information on there that you can use as a resource. Training tools and things like that.

Kalah Schmitz [00:07:32]:
Sure. Like an FAQ for those in the fumigation industry.

John B. Mueller [00:07:35]:
Yeah, I like that.

Kalah Schmitz [00:07:35]:
Yeah, yeah. So the rebalancing, the narrative, I totally from being immersed in the industry, I understand what you’re saying between two different sides talking, but yet they want this tool. So can you go into the rebalancing, the narrative comment that you made there?

John B. Mueller [00:07:50]:
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of food safety managers in the market that look at fumigation as failure and it very well could be. I mean, if these, if these food safety managers have a lot more ways to keep their facilities clean, there’s no substitute for cleaning. Right. So. And if they have a very sound Integrated pest management program, food safety program, they very well may not need fumigation. If you wet wash a facility, you know, you, you’ve, you’re taking care of a lot of the problems. Water washes a lot of sins away. So you know, that side of the post harvest market, they can control that. Right. What are the things that impact them is obviously cleaning input, ingredients that come in, infested old structures in those instances where there’s a lot of harborages and things like that. So those kind of scenarios lends food processing facilities to depend on fumigation a little more. But if you can clean very effectively, you may never need it. But one thing is for certain, if you do need it, you want that big hammer, that tool to be there. And I can’t tell you how many times we have people call and say, you know, I haven’t fumigated in 30 years, or I’ve never had to fumigate. And suddenly they’re calling and they’re asking for the big hammer. And you want that in the toolbox?

Kalah Schmitz [00:09:19]:
Yeah, yeah, you definitely. It’s nice to have, but creating conversation around that narrative and any negative connotation, hopefully we’ll be done here. I know you’ve said we, and I think as a fumigator of 40 years, that that’s just as part of your identity is you’ll always be known as a fumigator and you’re going to share your experience with the viewers and the listeners here. But just to clear the air, do you have RU4 hire fumigation applicator right now with the fumigation company?

John B. Mueller [00:09:48]:
We are not a fumigation company in the sense of providing the services, the physical services. So that’s a hard no.

Kalah Schmitz [00:09:56]:
Hard no.

John B. Mueller [00:09:57]:
Just be very clear.

Kalah Schmitz [00:09:58]:
Say it again.

John B. Mueller [00:09:59]:
That’s a hard. So we want to focus on helping the industry with some of the transitions that are going on and the expansions of the market. We want to help them with tools that get them back to driving performance so that customers can realize the value of fumigation based on the results. To me, that’s the exciting part of transitioning away from doing fumigations and really kind of sharing out those experiences and focusing on solutions.

Kalah Schmitz [00:10:29]:
So everybody needs to listen up because if he’s not for hire for doing the services, then you need to listen up yourself and let’s go into some of those services and the key points of fumigation here.

John B. Mueller [00:10:40]:
Yeah, so with fumigation, you cannot have a conversation around fumigation without talking about safety. So a lot of times we think myopically around, singularly around safety, and that’s applicator safety, when in fact that’s just one component of a lot of safety criteria. So we’ve got operator safety. So the applicator, obviously, the person that’s the fumigator themselves, that’s a tremendous amount of focus. But sometimes we forget about the operator until we’re doing the work. But an operator is those employees of the customer that we’re doing work at. So the operator, in focusing on their safety is very critical. Bystanders, so people walking down sidewalks, driving down roads, bystanders are very, very critical. Also equipment, you know, we know that phosphine is corrosive to soft metals and it’ll destroy circuit boards and computers and things like that. So, you know, there’s equipment safety, there’s product safety. I mean, we are many times fumigating consumables. And those consumables are protected by the science behind that label. So we can’t use too much or we could potentially adulterate that commodity or that foodstuffs. So product safety is critical, and then so is environmental safety. So also very critical. And the label is designed to protect us and focus primarily on safety.

Kalah Schmitz [00:12:07]:
And with safety, I know that’s a big component. Several companies have their own safety team, and that also leads into compliance, correct?

John B. Mueller [00:12:16]:
Yes, correct. Yeah. And compliance is really just that. It goes through and with safety, but it also focuses on some other things. The labels that we know for these fumigants are, you know, 45 and 60 pages long. They are. And they cover all kinds of different criteria. They’re laid out very well, they’re easily followed. You know, also from a compliance standpoint, we’ve got transportation DOT restrictions when we transport fumigants. So and not just from a commercial DOT standpoint, from a hazardous material hauling standpoint. And these are very serious issues. And these regulations are tight. You know, we’ve also got storage that states regulate and all done through the label. And the guidelines are in there to comply with. We’ve got emissions and disposal and also Department of Homeland Security. Most of these or all these fumigants are chemicals of interest in the dhs, you know, view. So many fumigators get visits from DHS and have to be registered with DHS and then state and local regulations as well, many times choose to regulate fumigators. So compliance is huge.

Kalah Schmitz [00:13:31]:
Yeah. And with safety and compliance and the list can go on and on. And I know people feel probably, I know in the industry weighed down by some of this. But there’s a purpose behind it and it is very important. But along with that, there’s also what I think is more fun is the innovative part. So that goes along with it. That kind of brings some breath and fresh air to the safety and compliance.

John B. Mueller [00:13:53]:
Yeah, yeah. And this is what I’m, you know, the innovative part is what I’m looking most forward to. So, you know, how can we help develop things to improve performance for fumigators? A big part that I know is missing from fumigation is tools to provide transparency to the services that you’re providing and the work that you’re doing. Transparency allows you to develop analytics. Analytics reviewed allows you to drive performance. And that’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the fun parts of what our mission is here. We’re looking at some digital solutions as well that will make jobs easier, especially from a compliance standpoint. There’s so much to compliance. We’re going to have to reach out to innovative things like some digital options to help us organize that and to stay compliant and then really drive savings too. I mean, we hear from the customers, the customers are frustrated that fumigation costs are too high. So number one, the easiest way to satisfy them is to have a very, very high level of performance. And what are some tools that we have to get there? So the fumigation company will really focus on these kinds of equipment and devices.

Kalah Schmitz [00:15:08]:
Well, on the analytics and the transparency. I mean, they’re proven results that you’re going to see at the end of a fumigation, which then justify the tool that fumigation is so great stuff here. So let’s rewind here and start from the beginning of explaining to people what are fumigants, because there is some confusion out there. When I told people that I was in the fumigation industry, they just, they thought. I don’t even know what they thought at times, but it wasn’t what it was. So what are fumigants and how are they so successful?

John B. Mueller [00:15:41]:
So what are fumigants? Fumigants are, in my opinion, the most potent tool in the integrated pest management toolbox. I think of it as a big hammer. And we’ll kind of explain that with a little more detail later on. When you need a hammer, it needs to be there. Right?

Kalah Schmitz [00:16:00]:
And work. Be there and work. Yes.

John B. Mueller [00:16:03]:
And I think there’s some confusion around the different tools. Many people, when they say fumigation, they really mean fog and, and fogging is very different. It’s a different tool. It’s a completely different tool. So we want to clear that up on what fumigation is and what it isn’t sometimes. But also, you know, the role and the potency of fumigation. You know, what, what is the physical nature that provides such potency for this as an option? And the first thing is you have to realize with fumigants is mobility. There’s no other option in your toolbox that provides mobility where you can release something into a space and it’ll fill that space and go to where the pest is. And fumigants do that. They’re highly mobile. They’ll even, they’ll go through statically dense product, they’ll go through grain masses, they’ll go into wall voids and kill what might be lying in some of these voids. So mobility is a huge issue, a huge attribute of fumigants. Fumigants are fast acting. Many of these residual chemistries that you lay down, the insect has to walk across those surfaces for them to have the reaction, the fatal reaction. If they don’t walk across those surfaces, you’re not controlling the pest. And in that instance, just by nature of walking, it’s the active insects that we’re controlling and not the eggs. And it takes a lot of time. So fumigants don’t. Fumigants are fast acting, fumigants are non selective, means they kill the egg, larva, pupa and adult as they fill that void. And there’s no other product out there with that kind of function. And I think one of the items that is most overlooked is the low or no residual toxicity aspect of these fumigants. Fumigant gases, the chemistry, if you look at it, is they are, they’re not organic, there’s no carbon to the makeup. So since they’re inorganic compounds, they tend to not bind up with other organics. Now, is there residues? If you look hard enough in commodities treated or food treated, yes, you can find residues. There are MRLs, minimum residue level, or I’m sorry, maximum residue level that are set, but they are incredibly low by comparison to other options that are out there. So this is a huge issue because I think today’s consumer, it’s not that they don’t want pesticides because they don’t want pests. There is some realization and reality here. But what they really don’t want, I believe, is residues. And fumigants is the lowest residual option that you can choose. So I think that’s worthy of a lot of discussion. And then also the precision control of fumigants because we’re sealing a structure up and releasing a gas in that structure. We also can monitor that gas and really peg the gas concentrations where they need to be to do exactly that. Kill all life stages of the insect egg through adult. So the ability to control the outcome during the treatment is, is another aspect I think that’s very important and worthy of discussion.

Kalah Schmitz [00:19:27]:
So interesting. So science, there’s so much science behind it. And I think in this day and age, you are right. People don’t want the residual left on, on the surface, anywhere. So can you hit more on the low or low to no residual toxicity? Yeah, I mean it’s because that’s I think a concern. When people hear fumigation, they think oh my gosh. And that’s when they, you know, clean, clean, clean, which you should do. But then for the consumer out there, or as fumigators that are listening are going to be having conversations with our customers and enlightening them. Can you share more about this? Because this is a huge point here.

John B. Mueller [00:20:01]:
Yeah. If you look at the. Just be situational with fumigants for a moment. Many times it’s when we’re talking about treating food processing facilities, it’s really the equipment. Very little food is actually treated from a fumigation standpoint. It’s the processing equipment, it’s the product pathways, it’s the open space. It’s really kind of a sanitary break for these facilities that may be where the insect populations have overwhelmed cleaning or other integrated pest management programs and food safety programs. So it gives them the ability to kind of reset and then go back and rely on these cleaning programs and IPM programs, food safety programs to then maintain that stability. Now, on the commodity management side, just for a moment, situationally think about a 1 or 2 million cubic foot grain bin that’s full of wheat and how cleaning is not an option at that point. That wheat might sit there for one or two or three years. How does that commodity manager control that pest that is degrading his product every.

Kalah Schmitz [00:21:09]:
Day, eating his profit?

John B. Mueller [00:21:11]:
Absolutely. This is a place where food processors want the commodity manager to treat and treat effectively. And the only thing that’s really going to go in in those scenarios, mobile and non selectively with minimal toxicity, residual toxicity and eliminate that problem is gas fumigants appreciate you kind of pushing that a little bit.

Kalah Schmitz [00:21:34]:
Yeah, of course, of course. So we’ve talked about fumigants, what they are, but They’ve been around since I believe, the 1950s. So how did they come about? How do we get them? Where do they come from? Science behind them.

John B. Mueller [00:21:49]:
Yeah. So where do they come from? This is really important to the fundamentals of what we, what we’re talking about here. Fumigants are born from science. It’s science that scientists that research these gases figure out what they can do, what they can’t do. Sometimes they come across these gases and realize their toxicity is such that they want to then plug it into a pest control tool and they start to do research. They do efficacy research. They spend years on some of these studies. Lots of money and grants and things like that are poured into this research. Part of that research looks at the human toxicity side, mammalia toxicity. And there is a massive amount of scientific work that goes into this.

Kalah Schmitz [00:22:36]:
I can’t imagine.

John B. Mueller [00:22:37]:
Yeah, Once they’re able to key in on a product, then they look for a chemical manufacturer that’s interested, that works in that space and they deliver that science. Or maybe the chemical manufacturer’s looking at the scientists, but they use their people then to start to develop a label. They’re scientists and that label then is based on scientific performance and safety. And they start to generate that label and then they take that information, that package of information around that new fumigant and present that to epa. EPA evaluates that with their scientists. They look at human health effects, they look at efficacy, maybe to a little lesser degree, but they still look at efficacy. And they look at all the other safety aspects of applicator safety, bystander safety, product safety. They establish these maximum residue levels from a consumer safety. There’s a tremendous amount of science that goes into the development of this. And equal to the amount of science is dollars. There are tens of millions of dollars spent in developing these fumigants. So when you think, you know, fumigation is so expensive. It is, but there’s a reason, there is absolutely a reason behind that because it’s not only bringing that fumigant to market, it has to be maintained. There is a higher standard of re registration or review by the regulators to fumigants than other pesticides. And they’re in a 15 year re review cycle. So and every time that happens, it’s more millions of dollars that goes out to just maintain the label.

Kalah Schmitz [00:24:23]:
So the time in just the epa and from the safety standpoint of going over it with a fine tooth comb almost, I mean, there’s so much that needs because, I mean, safety is number one here. As we talked about in companies having safety groups or compliance groups, regulatory, there’s so much that goes into it. So the time is huge. So that that’s truly. There is science behind. It’s not just magic beans that are thrown out there.

John B. Mueller [00:24:46]:
Exactly. That can’t be more succinctly said. The other thing too, about the RE registration that’s important to understand is the RE registration is really the market has already proven the product. So if the product continues on for 15 years, it must have some value to its space. But really where the RE review process is involved is in safety. They take a look at the science that led to the product 15 years ago, they look at any issues that have come up during that period of time that could be safety related. And then in their review process, they see if they need to have nuances or changes in that label to improve safety. So these fumigants, even though we haven’t had a new one to date in 75 years, we’ve had some new labels and some new deliveries, but we haven’t had a new, truly new chemistry. But it’s time tested now. These labels have been massaged, they’ve been improved. And I think we can feel comfortable that if we follow that label, we can stay safe.

Kalah Schmitz [00:25:52]:
That’s the key. Follow the label, stay safe, and we’ll keep these fumigants and the hammer tool in place for the industry. So, I mean, we could talk for hours on this subject and I believe we have in our past. So we’ve got a lot to cover. We’ve covered a lot here. Just to provide a basis here in episode one, what can. And I know there’s so much more. I can think of so many more episodes to have. But what are some. Just teasers for the listeners and viewers to know of what are some potential episodes that are going to be coming up and what are you going to be covering?

John B. Mueller [00:26:24]:
So there is a lot to cover. You know, we haven’t talked much about, you know, start with the insect. We’ll be covering the science and how that relates not only pairing these fumigants to how they kill the pest and which insects are more challenging to kill than others. We’ll have whole separate podcasts on starting with the insect first. But it is pretty specific. When I first came into this market, fumigation was much more tactical. We didn’t talk about the science. We applied the fumigant. It was a sea bug kill mentality. If you didn’t kill the bug, it was, you know, it was your Fault and then the fumigators blame the fumigant. And it’s just, it was just. It’s a mess. And, you know, some of that still goes on today.

Kalah Schmitz [00:27:10]:
Well, even though the stages. You talked about the type of insect, but also the stages. So even if you kill the adult, there’s still a family or eggs or pupa, and it’s. Did you get them?

John B. Mueller [00:27:20]:
Yeah. And that’s kind of the false narrative of fumigation. Right. So it’s very easy not to dig too deeply into the insect side of it. But, you know, it takes a tenth of the amount of fumigant to kill adults as it does the eggs. So it takes 10 times more fumigant and usually longer treatment time to kill the eggs. The eggs are much, much more difficult to kill. You’re going to hear a whole lot about that. And I’ll beat on that, that egg mortality drum a lot of. So, you know, it was, you know, in the 80s and 90s, fumigation was a lot more tactical. And then we started to become more scientific when Dow AgroSciences developed the fumiguide. The fumiguide really individually paired the biological needs to control specific insects. And when we’re talking about specific insects, there’s like 13 to 20, depending on how you want to look at this. There’s not a lot of insects out there that really target these commodities. And so but they went in and they looked at the scientific data, and if it didn’t exist, they reproduced it to be very, very focused on each type of insect, to take the science and drive the results and the value from that product. And Dow AgroSciences started that with the fumiguide. And now that’s transitioned in business over to Douglas Products, who’s done a great job of stewarding this and really giving us a digital label that we can plug. The situation that we’re dealing with, the pest that we’re dealing with, the size, the temperature, all these dynamics, and it will tell us what we need to do and when we can follow that label.

Kalah Schmitz [00:29:00]:
Dialing it in.

John B. Mueller [00:29:01]:
Absolutely.

Kalah Schmitz [00:29:02]:
Dialing it in.

John B. Mueller [00:29:02]:
That’s that precision nature that we were talking about earlier.

Kalah Schmitz [00:29:06]:
So in closing, we do. You’ve heard from John, you’ve heard from me a little bit, and we want to introduce you to, to a character of all things fumigation, and that is the Science Cowboy. Can you explain where this came from? The Science Cowboy.

John B. Mueller [00:29:20]:
Yeah. So the Science Cowboy. There’s a lot to this, but we’ll make it brief. So it’s really focusing on applying the science, kind of getting back, getting away from the tactical nature of our past, focusing and recognizing the science. But, but this is also an agrarian base industry that we’re dealing with. And I think it’s kind of a shout out to them. And also there’s kind of a derogatory slant that fumigators get because what people don’t realize is a lot of what we’re doing is in the middle of the night, there’s no one around, there’s no maintenance to call out to if there’s a problem. You know, Home Depot’s closed. There’s, there’s no help. You’re on your own. And you have to figure it out safely and effectively. And sometimes people that judge after the fact have grown to call us cowboys. So let’s own it.

Kalah Schmitz [00:30:17]:
Yes. Yes. And there’s so much science behind this. So with that, we want to hear from you. So like, and subscribe to the podcast you’re listening to to hear more of this, to learn more. I think this is to be an amazing tool for the industry. Check out our website. Don’t forget to check us out on YouTube. But we’re going to be hoping to hear from you and plugging in your experiences on our upcoming podcast.

John B. Mueller [00:30:41]:
Yeah. And look, I want to thank you for joining us, taking time out of your schedule. I want to thank Kayla for moderating. She does a good job, as you can see. And we really hope that you join us for the next episode of All Things Fumigation.

Kalah Schmitz [00:30:53]:
It.