Orkin Helps Us Think Like a Cockroach

In the world of GMPs and quality, it's easy to overlook the importance of pest management until its too late. In this episode,  Frank Meek, Manager of Technical Services at Rollins/Orkin joins us to tell us how Orkin approaches all things pest control, from prevention, investigations, and control of pest along with other services they provide the industry. 

Frank Meek is a Technical Services Manager for Rollins. As a board-certified entomologist and 30-year industry veteran, he is an acknowledged leader in the field of pest management.  He loves insects, spiders, and crawl spaces. Listen in as Frank shares his passion for pest control and teaches Leslie and I how to be better insect detectives.

To reach out to Orkin's industry team, visit here: https://www.orkincommercial.com/ 

You can also visit: https://www.orkin.com

Transcript

Aaron Harmon: 0:00

Hi, I'm Aaron Harmon.

Leslie Cooper: 0:01

And I'm Leslie Cooper. Welcome to Inside Out Quality.

Aaron Harmon: 0:05

Leslie and I are quality nerds. We like to figure out what can go wrong and how it can be prevented. Cap is our our friend. How can we use quality to build better safer products? Can quality be a tool entrepreneurs use for success?

Leslie Cooper: 0:19

On this podcast we talked to some fascinating guests and listened to their stories about quality events gone both right and wrong. we dissect the stories to teach and learn from the experiences of our guests. So grab your coffee, secure the lid, ensure it's not too hot and enjoy our episode.

Aaron Harmon: 0:38

1906 Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle describes the flies and rats in meatpacking houses in Chicago. product manufacturing has come a long way since 1906. But insects and rodents can still be problematic. For any manufacturer, whether it be food drug cosmetics are more as an example, the FDA issued an alert in 2022 about a food storage facility which was contaminated with rodents. In the inspection data identified over 1000 mice that were killed following fumigation. Unfortunately, this incident isn't the only one in recent times. In one FDA warning letter, they write vermin were present in your production area. Specifically dead ants were observed on the floor of the unclassified general production area, and dead cockroaches were observed with a drawer adjacent to the hood where drug products were being produced. And then another FDA warning letter, approximately three insects in the laboratory room were observed as operators for repairing piles to were located on the viewing window of the sterile production room and a third was observed to be within the nonsterile ante room. The FDA also observed a roll of flying insect tape hanging from the ceiling next to the sink in the laboratory room. Lovely in my expertise is not in pest control, but it is in Orkin's that is why they are joining us today. Today we are joined by Frank meek, a tech services manager at Rollins Inc, the parent company of Orkin. Welcome to Inside Out Quality, Frank.

Frank Meek: 1:59

Thank you. Great to be here with you today.

Aaron Harmon: 2:01

So first of all, how did you get into the position you have now?

Frank Meek: 2:06

Well, so that's kind of an interesting story, I guess. I'll give you the Reader's Digest version of it. I started with Orkin in 1986. Really, because I had lost my job to an injury. And my wife was pregnant with our first child and I needed income and insurance. And the Orkin's office was right up the street from our our little apartment we lived in. So I went up and got a job and said, Well, this will hold me over until I find a real job. So 36 years later, I guess I'm still looking for that real job, but just fell in love with the pest control business and the customer service business and decided to stick with it. Went back to school and learned entomology and business and just worked my way up through the ranks.

Aaron Harmon: 2:59

That's awesome. You don't hear a lot of those stories. Now. It feels like people move around so quick anymore that that longevity is pretty awesome.

Frank Meek: 3:07

Yeah, you know, you see that a lot in our industry. No one ever really grows up wanting to be the bug person or the Bug Guy or what have you or the exterminator. People get into this business and it and it gets into your system so to speak. You love it and stay with it forever or you hate it and get out of it quickly. So you see a lot of long term people in this industry.

Aaron Harmon: 3:31

So when you see a crawlspace like a crawlspace under a house full of bugs. You're the kind of guy that's like I'm going in

Frank Meek: 3:38

absolutely with flux and miles in one hand and a flashlight.

Aaron Harmon: 3:44

I got it our entire basement because it was crawlspace lifted the house and had a bulldoze out to eliminate that crawlspace. That's the extremes that I go through to avoid that.

Leslie Cooper: 3:57

Yeah, I went there and nope, no crawlspaces nah, nope.

Frank Meek: 4:02

So there have been a few adventures insights and crawlspaces over the years. So

Aaron Harmon: 4:06

that's why I do not go in them. So I grew up watching commercials. I've seen the Orkin commercials on TV and the Orkin man. Every time I've seen it in my head has been this image of like residential. This is for my house. What kind of services do you guys have for manufacturers and companies?

Frank Meek: 4:27

Yeah, so it's not known widely, but we are the largest commercial pest control provider in the US and probably in the world with our international operations. So we offer residential service to your homes, certainly, as you indicated, but commercial pest control service, focusing in all types of industries, but we really key in and focus in on things like the health care industry, the health Hospitality industry, the food processing, pharmaceutical manufacturing, those are our our target key type businesses that we have a very heavy presence in, not only here in the States, but really around the world. And then we also take care of things like termites for people in their homes and businesses, wildlife control, odor management, all of the ancillary services or ancillary services that go with pest management and pest control. About 40% of our total business is commercial pest control, which is a lot when you're a 2 billion plus dollar company. I've never

Aaron Harmon: 5:41

heard of odor control as being a service. Can you talk a little bit more about that

Frank Meek: 5:46

kind of curiosity? Certainly, well, you know, there's two aspects of that there's the customer facing aspect where people want to walk in and be greeted with pleasant experiences, aromas, smells that invite you in. So there's that aspect of odor management. But there's the other side, which is probably more important and key in the reducing attraction to pest. So some things of public health pests like a housefly, which can spread hundreds of diseases potentially, is attracted by an odor. So if you can mask or even eliminate that odor, you reduce the potential for attracting a fly to a property. Whether that's a hotel or a restaurant, or a processing facility. I had never considered

Leslie Cooper: 6:38

I didn't realize that. Can you think of the smell? Not? What's going to track the bugs? That's very interesting. So how can someone know when there is a problem? I mean, short of seeing the pests around are there other key items that people should watch for?

Frank Meek: 6:54

There are a lot of those sort of things that we try to teach customers as well as service professionals, to look for the clues of a problem. So certainly, you know, as you said, if you see the insect or the rodent or something, you know that you have an issue. But you also can look for the conditions that are conducive for pest activity. And that tells you where to start looking for things and the types of things to watch out for. As an example, water on the outside of a building is an attraction to a lot of things. Now, if we find spider webs close by that water, or close by a light or close by a door, we know that that spider is there catching insects, because that's its only food source. Spiders eat insects. So they're going to create a web only where there's food, they're not going to waste that, that energy, that resource of their body, on creating a web, if they don't have a food to eat, or food to capture. So looking for something as simple as a spider web indicates a flying insect problem. If that spider web is up at the, at the ceiling, we know that that's a nighttime flying insect that's coming in, attracted to the lights. If it's at the floor level, we know it's after crawling insects that are coming through the doors. If it's the waist level one or two meters off the floor, we know that it's looking for maybe stored product pests, or something that's flying around during the daytime. So those sorts of clues. To help us point out what potentially is there.

Leslie Cooper: 8:41

We're gonna look at a spider web the same.

Frank Meek: 8:46

Everybody wants to take them down, I want them left up a little bit so we can get the information and then get rid of them.

Aaron Harmon: 8:54

This may sound like silly, but in our house, most of the time I see spiders on the floor. And I have taken that to assume this is probably the worst explanation I can come up with. But my assumption was is because that particular species of spiders must like having welts by the floor. I had never thought to put the food source.

Frank Meek: 9:15

Yeah, you know, growing. I have two kids as they were growing up. They're both off on their own and married. And in the sciences as well. You know, one of the things that that I taught them growing up is spiders are never to be killed inside this house. I taught them how to properly pick them up safely and remove them to the outside so that they can go back and do that beneficial work that they do.

Leslie Cooper: 9:40

That's very interesting.

Aaron Harmon: 9:41

I killed them all because it didn't pay rent.

Frank Meek: 9:46

But there are some bad ones that we do want to get rid of and not allowed to to hang out there are some venomous spiders that can harm us. But you know, most of them were pretty beneficial.

Leslie Cooper: 9:57

I did have a roommate like that she we had a rule If I found a spider, she had 60 seconds to get it out of our house before I kill it.

Aaron Harmon: 10:10

Now out of curiosity, how do I safely remove spiders to the outdoors? I stopped terminating them.

Frank Meek: 10:18

Well, the easiest way is to put a cup over the top of it and then slide a sheet of paper underneath the cup, pick it up and carry it out.

Aaron Harmon: 10:25

Have you seen those vacuums? For like friendly spider movers? Are those things work?

Frank Meek: 10:30

If they're not too strong, yes, they're too strong. They just sort of get masqueraded in the fan that draws the Arab inside.

Aaron Harmon: 10:39

Because I don't like the idea of like a cup in my hand over the spider, like something that creates safe distance.

Frank Meek: 10:50

Oh, my, yeah, it's um, you know, there's a lot of these creatures out there that that tell us things are are going on. Wasp are another one. No, you know, wasp are certainly dangerous to us. So we don't want to keep them around. But they are also an indicator sometimes of other problems of other insects in the area. Because they feed on not only pollen, but on insects as well. There's a lot of things that people can look for the droppings, the feces of rodents, the smell of rodents, you can actually smell the urine, when there's rodents inside a building. And when you've been in the business a long time, a lot of people I can do this. And and I know several of my colleagues can, that smell will tell you whether it's a rat or a mouse, because the urine is so different between the two, the odors, sounds. And those visual clues tell us that there's a problem somewhere?

Aaron Harmon: 11:50

That's impressive. Do you guys have like cards where you're like, smell this card and you train? Like how do you train to know the different smells?

Frank Meek: 11:56

Yeah, I wish it was that easy. But it's just an experience thing. And when someone is really starting out, one of the things we try to talk to them about is pay attention to what you're seeing and what you're experiencing with your other senses. You're seeing these cockroaches, pay attention to the smells, pay attention to the sounds. And all those things after just continuous repetitive exposure just kind of gets ingrained into you. And it becomes second nature. I get a lot of funny looks on an inspection when I'll walk around sniffing the air and putting my ear up against the wall to listen to things. But it's part of being a good detective, when you're looking for pest. And that

Aaron Harmon: 12:43

was the word I was going to use as Detective it sounds like you're really just absorbing information to make decisions. And not just going in and blasting with some kind of treatment.

Frank Meek: 12:52

Yes, absolutely. In the past, really kind of all the way up into the 80s. And early 90s was a very heavy emphasis on spray it down by God something to walk on it and die at some point in time. And that was Pest Management. Today, it's more target specific, more environmentally friendly, focusing on the use of processes like IPM, integrated pest management that utilizes all types of technology, not just chemicals, but non chemical tools, as well as pesticides when they're needed, and only used judiciously as opposed to all the time. So can you

Aaron Harmon: 13:35

give us some examples where you've used the skills and have tackled some kind of problems that have been going wrong for a customer?

Frank Meek: 13:42

I'm sure there's, you know, one of the big things in food processing pharmaceutical world and such is trace analysis. So we've been I've been called in several times to situations where another company would be doing service on a facility, and a pest would be found in a product or in a packaging. And then we would have to come in and analyze as a third party observer, okay, this is the chain of the product, analyzing every step in that chain, and then figuring out where are the potential places where this contaminant could have gotten in investigating that and it's all based on the biology of the insect or the biology of the past, as to where you look in detail out. These are the points where it could have gotten in here are the things that need to be done to prevent that from happening again. And that's something that entomologists do particularly in the Food Safety arena. And when you're working with the cGMPs, and things like that, and processing is analyzing the cause, analyzing the potential problems, and then designing the fix for it. Now, a lot of times, we get a lot of new business. And it's because of a failure quite often, people don't switch to us because they're trying to save money, they switch because there's a problem that hasn't been solved. And that's where we step in and really do that. But it all comes back to knowing the past, understanding what it wants to do where it wants to be. You know, Aaron is cliche, but we walk in and think like the cockroach or think like the fly. If I was a cockroach, where do I want to be at inside here. And that's the mentality that we have to go into these situations with.

Aaron Harmon: 15:38

Now we'll take a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors. Today's startups

Joni Ekstrum: 15:42

become tomorrow's growth engines. In South Dakota, we're entering a new stage of expansion for our biotech industry, and you want to be part of it. Hi, I'm Tony Johnson, Executive Director of South Dakota biotech, where the state affiliates of the International bio organization, and we're proud to be leading a state that's driving innovation to feed, fuel and heal the world. South Dakota, biotech is here to inform, to connect, and to advocate for our critical industry. Whether you're directly involved in biotechnology, or looking to learn more about it, we want to hear from you find us at www that SD bio.org. Now back to the show.

Aaron Harmon: 16:22

So, if I had a pharmaceutical facility, and someone reported an insect or pest somewhere, I should be capturing it, information about where it was, so that you can come in as the detective and help figure out where that would have gotten in

Frank Meek: 16:39

and where the problem is, right? Because sometimes when you get that test, it can be identified and discovered that, okay, this particular species only lives in X, Y, Z geography, when was your product or an ingredient in that geography. But then the hard ones are when you get a cosmopolitan pest that's found everywhere in the world, then you really have to start digging in and tracing that, that product and everything that goes into that product throughout the production cycle. So those are the hard ones. The easy ones are when you have something that's only found in India, or the southwestern US, or wherever.

Aaron Harmon: 17:24

I've seen like the stories online that people buying bananas and getting some giant tarantula with them. Is there like truth to that?

Frank Meek: 17:31

There can be Yes, um, a lot of insects and spiders come in, in product and food, specifically. So now they're supposed to go through some ripening gas treatments when they come into the US. But those don't always control those animals. Because the boxes are inner wrapped. You've got a cardboard box that has plastic wrap inside it. And then your produce might be wrapped up inside that bag. So it doesn't always get completely through. So yes, spiders, invasive ants, invasive beetles, all sorts of things can come in that way. Wow. Wow. That's Have you

Aaron Harmon: 18:12

ever had any encounters of like giant tarantulas and venomous things?

Frank Meek: 18:17

Yes, for you know, for a lot of years, I was the worked with our international team, and was the Director of Technical for the for the International Group, really for about 12 years. So I got to work in a lot of really unique environments. Remember working in Costa Rica, and seeing and experiencing these large bullet ants that live in the tropics, they called a bullet amp because the sting feels like you got shot by a 22 Allegedly. So I've never been hit by either one. So I'll take your word for it. Big Goliath tarantulas down in the jungles in Brazil, in the Amazon basin. Spiders that were, you know if you can imagine a basketball and a spider that can sit on top of that basketball and his legs kind of dropped down almost to the halfway point of that ball. Oh,

Aaron Harmon: 19:12

there'd be no cup and paper rest no happening. I would be shooting it with a 22 that.

Frank Meek: 19:23

I was thinking more about a 14 shot gun is 22.

Aaron Harmon: 19:26

Okay. With you there that one?

Leslie Cooper: 19:31

So, I mean, you've talked a lot about how you help people fix problems. What services do you offer? Could you recommend a help planning for pest control? When you know you have a business or when you're building a business? What advice do you have in that area?

Frank Meek: 19:49

Yes, that's a great question. Let me start going back to the first thing you said if we have to remediate a problem in my mind, it's too late. The whole focus of the IPM approach is to prevent problems from ever happening in the first place. So part of that is certainly building design. And one of the things that we do for a lot of our customers, particularly these, these large national organizations that are building new locations every place and such, and have come in and help them, analyze their blueprints, analyze the environment on the outside, and then help them with some design ideas. As far as lighting, where do you need to put electricity on the inside, so that this type of trap can be placed, and help design a facility so that it is as pest resistant as possible up front? That makes the control and prevention that much easier? When you get into it? Then you're gonna have to think like, supply chain, things being shipped?

Aaron Harmon: 20:59

How you packaging? I'm guessing as well.

Frank Meek: 21:02

Yeah, you have to understand the business and understand, Okay, where did the products that this business is going to be bringing in? What are they? What type of goods? Are they? How are they being moved? Are they coming in Conex boxes on a ship? Or are they coming from a field into a boxcar on a rail and and up? How are things being moved? What are those products? And what are the things that I need to have in place to try to prevent those things from being an infestation when they show up? I'm always going to assume and we should always assume that every facility will have bugs at some time. But how do we prevent those bugs? Or those pests from being an infestation? That's the key is what can I do to prevent this animal from getting in and making a living for itself raising a family and causing havoc? That's what we want to prevent.

Aaron Harmon: 22:01

So the saying if you see was it like one cockroach, you have 100 There's a good chance that scattered infestation.

Frank Meek: 22:08

Yeah, if you see that one in the daytime. Yes. If you see that one at night, maybe maybe not depends on the, the approximate life stage that it's in. That depends on where you found it, those sorts of things. But if you see a cockroach, a German cockroach, the most common one in the world. If you saw that in the middle of the day, in a facility, that's an indicator normally that there is a serious infestation, because they're nocturnal. They're cryptic, they don't want to be out and they really only like to move around at night. So if they're moving in the day, it means that the harbage The shelter is full, and they don't have a place to hide. So they're just out trying to find something.

Aaron Harmon: 22:50

Homeless cockroaches in your home.

Frank Meek: 22:53

People hate cockroaches. I personally love them because they've made my life and living for the last few decades.

Aaron Harmon: 23:02

So do you have any like pet insects in your house? Do you have like little like a little you can get the giant cockroaches and things like that at the pet store? Do you have any of these kinds of kinds of things?

Frank Meek: 23:12

I don't currently, but in the past Yes, I've raised I've raised tarantulas, I've raised the Madagascar hissing cockroaches. I've had colonies of German roaches and American roaches all in my little office area here at my home. And I've also raised Vietnamese centipedes giant millipedes so

Aaron Harmon: 23:38

so like the Senate piece that like track you down a lot of bite you and like attack bats and things.

Frank Meek: 23:43

Oh, they don't do so much tracking down but they will bite and they are venomous. Yes.

Aaron Harmon: 23:50

Yep, nope, no cut protection and removal outside for me with that either.

Frank Meek: 23:55

Fortunately, we don't have those in the US other than as pets. So I don't think they would survive too long in our environment outside.

Leslie Cooper: 24:05

I think if I saw any of those, I would be calling you like that's how that situation would go.

Frank Meek: 24:14

If, in fact, I'll tell you a funny, quick story of how your daughter who went on to study entomology and biology when she went to college. But years ago when she was dating a young man who is now her husband, we went to a restaurant, and I sat down we sat down to dinner and and her boyfriend was with us. And the first thing I did was sniff the air. And she looked at me and she reached over and grabbed my arm and said, Daddy, please don't say anything. I know what you're smelling. Don't say anything. And so we didn't say a word. We went on with our dinner and we got outside and she came up to me. She said they had American cockroaches in there didn't they said yeah, absolutely. How do you know? And she said, Well, you know while you're traveling, I Go into your lab and feed everything. And I just learned the smell of the American cockroach by putting kibble in their, in their bins. And she knew that there were cockroaches in that restaurant just by the smell.

Leslie Cooper: 25:14

So what's the craziest thing you've ever seen?

Frank Meek: 25:16

Some of the craziest things are some of the things people tried to do it yourself. Instead of calling in a professional. I remember going into an apartment in New York and seeing just white powder every place. And then come to find out this person had gone to a do it yourself pest control store. That online retailer that I won't mention but and just bought buckets of pesticidal dust and filled their mattress. Trying to make sure that the bedbugs were not going to be in there. And then sprinkled it all over the floor, the baseboards and every place and I mean, we put on masks to go in there just because it was so heavy with with pesticidal dust. Wow, that's all dangerous. It is dangerous. Yes.

Leslie Cooper: 26:10

So that actually brings up another question for me. I know you mentioned bedbugs, and heard of dogs that they trained to go into places and smell bedbugs. Do you guys utilize animals in any way to help sniff things? I mean, it sounds like you do a pretty good job of being able to smell some of these things. But do you guys utilize animals for that?

Frank Meek: 26:32

In some markets? Yes. We have some trained bedbug dogs. We've also used dogs in detecting termites and wood destroying beetles. They can pick up the sound that those beetles make. And yeah, that's that's, that's a whole nother science that that is part of our business and utilized. Wow.

Leslie Cooper: 26:57

It's the first time I heard that that they used dogs for finding bedbugs. I was like, Oh, I didn't realize bedbugs had a smell.

Frank Meek: 27:06

Yeah, let's see if you'll take a particular soda pop. If you let that soda go flat. That smell is kind of what bedbug smell like if there's a whole lot of them. Mm hmm. So yeah, dogs can pick that up. They also can pick up the sounds not necessarily a bedbugs, but they can pick up the sounds of beetles. needles inside word when they're eating, click, you know, take your fingernails and click them together.

Leslie Cooper: 27:34

Oh, okay.

Frank Meek: 27:35

The dogs can pick that up inside a piece of wood. Wow.

Aaron Harmon: 27:39

It's crazy. Do you when you go to hotels? Do you inspect for bedbugs before you spend the night there?

Frank Meek: 27:47

I've been asked that by media reporters often and my standard answer is not anymore. Because my colony got so big I did need to find. But no, really I don't. And I figure if I find them, I find them if I don't, I don't.

Aaron Harmon: 28:06

But you're the guy that would go into the crawlspace. So I guess they probably wouldn't fish anyways.

Frank Meek: 28:12

wouldn't bother me anyway. They don't spread disease. In my colony of bedbugs that I've had I feed on myself and like most of us do that keep those sort of creatures and so yeah, it's

Aaron Harmon: 28:26

your wild. I love it.

Frank Meek: 28:32

I can send you some pictures of of a colony of bedbugs feeding on my arm. Oh, man.

Aaron Harmon: 28:37

No. I love how you embrace your work.

Frank Meek: 28:45

Well, you know, these are very intriguing, interesting animals. People don't always necessarily understand the the importance from a food safety aspect of the insects and what's there. What happens to most people, if you see a fly in a restaurant, they just kind of wave their hand over their food and shoo the fly away and then go right ahead and eat. But if you saw a cockroach direct reactions completely different. Well, a cockroach a German Roach will only carry about 50 or so. disease organisms. They spread them but not as easily as a fly does, which carries over 100 different diseases. The cockroach has a better press agent, I guess where the fly doesn't have a good enough press agent or PR company behind them to give them the importance but people think about these things in completely different aspects and contexts. And yeah, it's interesting to see the different ways people react to seeing them.

Aaron Harmon: 29:51

We had a previous episode where the guests we had on him mentioned how humans are not very good at identifying risk and Yeah, I could totally see that with insects.

Frank Meek: 30:03

You know, we know that insects and pests in general, are responsible for destroying approximately 48% of our food that's both pre and post harvest, before humans ever have an opportunity to get to it, and that's with all the technology out there, and everything that we have at our at our fingertips, we still lose almost half of our food. It's, it's, it's so critical that proper pest management is in these places to make sure that that number doesn't get any higher.

Aaron Harmon: 30:38

That's how a lot of food, it's a lot better, I'll totally admit if I see food, and there's a flyer so on it, I will not touch it, or all i craftily carved around it will I'm consuming, because as soon as I see flies getting on my food, I don't know, either other services that Orkin provides, like you'd mentioned the odor protection or treatment of odors, that some I no clue about the other things we don't know about.

Frank Meek: 31:05

Well, there's of course Wildlife Service because wildlife, urban wildlife moves into areas, birds, everything from, you know, the birds on a building to raccoons and things like this that can certainly spread other organisms like fleas and ticks and things like that into areas, termite service, which is really critical in many parts of the US. So we do a lot of that work, about 20% of our business is outside of pest management outside of insect and rodent control. It's focused on these other services like termite exclusion, going in and fixing a building so that pests can't get inside. Managing the wildlife. Like I said, we do disinfection, we, during the pandemic, we were also very prominent in disinfecting buildings and services so that people could move safely inside them. There's a lot of those types of services that we are involved in, as well as some consulting, looking at processes and helping people make good integrate if I can steal shamelessly someone's old phrase.

Aaron Harmon: 32:23

I'm a huge fan of Preventative Medicine being the best medicine that that saying. And what I'm taking away is if I was going to build a facility or even have a process that I need to protect from pests, it's probably way easier to start off with talking to someone like yourself to get how often the beginning to prevent pests from becoming a problem versus trying to treat an infestation.

Frank Meek: 32:50

Absolutely. Yeah, if someone is providing Pest Services, and they are relying on just spraying of chemical every month, they're not looking at prevention, they are not going through and doing the things that are reducing the likelihood of problems. They're simply bandaid on broken legs, instead of doing the surgery that might be needed.

Aaron Harmon: 33:16

Do you see problems with resistance? So say a company does not do the preventative work? They go right to spraying and that approach? Does that fail over time? Do you are you seeing is there any kind of trend of insects getting resistant to the things that we use for pesticides?

Frank Meek: 33:32

Oh, yes, quite a bit. There's a couple of things that happen there. When there's continuous exposure, some of these will start developing a tolerance, which means that if 1x would control them before with tolerance, it may take 5x or 10x of product applied to be able to get the same level of control. And then that can lead to resistance, which means it doesn't matter how much is there, it's not going to work. And that can be a biological resistance where they have physically developed and morphed themselves, or have evolved to be able to physically take that toxin into their system, metabolize it, break it down and prevent it from interacting with their nervous system completely. Or it can be a learned behavioral resistance, where they say, Okay, this particular bait product was put here. I know that if I go over there to that thing and eat whatever it is, I'm not gonna feel well so I'm just not gonna go there anymore. So there's two types of things that occur there. And we monitor that all the time. You have to change not only your chemical, but you have to change your process in general, to be able to break these resistant issues when they come But if you're not watching it on a regular basis, it can really become a problem. Yes.

Leslie Cooper: 35:07

So kind of on keeping with the topic of looking at for these pests, and as you mentioned, keeping them out of your building, you know, in a preventative setting, if people were to have you come in, and, you know, just do an inspection to make sure you don't have any, are there specific times the time of day time of year that you recommend to go into these places? I know, here in the Midwest, right now, our houses are getting tons of flies, and it's getting cold outside, and they're all trying to come in? And do you do you see that as a common time of year where people start seeing these invest infestations.

Frank Meek: 35:45

So that's going to be kind of different across the US? And the real answer is, is there's not one particular season where these problems occur, there is something going on throughout the entire year. Now the type of problem may change in the late, late fall, early winter. So right about now when the the temperatures, I'm in Atlanta, so right about now, when the temperatures are starting to drop in the evenings, and overnight a little bit, you'll start getting more movement of rodents and things like that. But when a good inspection is performed, it doesn't really matter what time it is of the year or what season it is, because an inspection should be looking at the conditions conducive to pest. Is there water sources? Is there food sources? Is there harborage points. Those are the are their access points. Those are the things that a good inspection takes in not just looking for the bugs, but looking for those conditions that are conducive to their survival, and knowing what's in that particular geography. So if a company wants to

Aaron Harmon: 36:59

get your services, what's the best way to reach out to you guys,

Frank Meek: 37:03

Orkin's websites are one of the best places to start there. orkin.com. There's the our national call center, and the phone numbers are all listed there. Someone can call for their home, get a quote right there on the telephone. And if they like it, schedule service right away. For commercial businesses, the call center would put them in touch with a branch office, live, connect most of the time and schedule a qualified trained inspector to come out, do a good thorough evaluation of your business and tell you what's needed, and what the conditions are. So the website is the best place to start. working.com Awesome. Thank you. As a

Aaron Harmon: 37:48

sidenote, years ago, I worked for a vaccine manufacturer, and we had an office space and I had caught a toad. So I decided to keep it as a pet. And I brought the pet to work so they could sit on my desk in a little terrarium and hanging out. And one of our site veterinarians pointed out that it was an animal and there was rules around bringing pets and things into the workplace, specifically for our facility. So I renamed him pest control, because he was a toad. And I tried to make the case that we are required to have pest control. And so that is his job. And that's why he's there. And I got overruled and had to take him back home.

Frank Meek: 38:32

Yeah, the regulatory world has some of those things written into it. Absolutely.

Aaron Harmon: 38:37

There's no humor in the world. Well, thank you, frankly, appreciate having you on here.

Frank Meek: 38:44

Thanks a lot. I enjoyed talking with you. And it's always fun to talk about our business and I have a real passion for it. And I love talking to people about it. So

Leslie Cooper: 38:54

we enjoyed listening. Yeah, very good. Thank you.

Unknown: 38:58

You put a lot on the line to do your job right? Your time because surprises don't stick to the schedule your work because you stand by every decision you make. And so can your customers. As the partner who treats your business like our business, what's on the line for you? is on the line for us. Orkin, absolute confidence in your pest control.

Aaron Harmon: 39:25

We hope you enjoy this episode and we look forward to bringing you another

Leslie Cooper: 39:29

this episode of Inside Out quality was brought to you thanks to South Dakota biotech Association. If you have a story you'd like us to explore and share. We'd love to hear from you. Submit your ideas by visiting www.sd bio.org

Aaron Harmon: 39:44

You've made it this far in the episode. Thanks for listening