DATE:     3-1-96
CONTACT:  Dr. Mac Horton, (864) 656-3113
WRITER:  Bill Baker,     (864) 656-3875

Clemson Extension Entomologist Helps Write
Pesticide Standard for Canada

     CLEMSON -- Entomologist Mac Horton of the Clemson University Cooperative Extension Service is one of three 
Americans who helped write a nationwide standard for pesticide education,training and certification in Canada.
     Horton recently completed eight years of service on Canada's National Task Force on Pesticide Education, Training 
and Certification, which developed the standard. 
     The purpose of the standard is to provide minimum 
requirements through which Canada's provinces and territories 
can achieve uniformity in their regulations, Horton said. Prior 
to the new standard, each province had its own set of rules,
definitions and licensing, which made it difficult for commercial pesticide applicators and vendors to work in different 
parts of the country.
     "The various provinces recognized that their differing 
regulations caused real hardships on some people," Horton said.
"You had farmers whose land is setting right on the border of two provinces, and they had two separate sets of regulations to meet."          "In the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the 
new standard could also make it easier for American companies 
trying to do business in Canada by bringing Canadian pesticide regulations more in line with those in the U.S.," Horton said.          Horton was named to the task force in 1987, when he was 
serving a one-year appointment in Washington, D.C. as Extension's national program leader for pesticides. The other 
Americans who served on the task force are Winand Hock of Pennsylvania's Cooperative Extension Service and John Impson 
of the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- Cooperative State Research,Education and Extension Service.
     Horton came away from the project with a high opinion of 
the Canadian officials with whom he worked.
     "They're very methodical; their attention to detail is 
great," he said. "I think Canada now has a state of the art
standard."                       
                                END