Secrets

I used to do quality control for most products at Certis Biologicals. The two fungal products, PFR and SoilGard, were always below spec and contaminated with bacteria. Sometimes, they were contaminated with Double Nickel ( Bacillus amyloliquefaciens) , and this bacteria kills PFR and SoilGard. These two products are not very shelf stable at room temperature despite formulation changes. It will only last weeks tops. It may last a couple of months if refrigerated. This company tries to market a SoilGard product as stable for two years! LIES!!!! Don't even get me started on their other fungal products. The measure of potency for their other fungal products uses germination (viable spores/g or viable spores/ml) instead of colony forming units (CFU/g or CFU/ml). Most of the time these products will pass if they claim viable spores counts, but they will fail if they claim CFU counts. PFR and SoilGard use CFU counts, while the other fungal products acquired from the LAM international in B...

The two products that don't work from this biopesticides company are Seduce (ant bait) and Homeplate (herbicide). They don't work. The ants are still alive and not killed off! The ants got smart and avoided eating these pellets. Homeplate doesn't work. The weeds keep growing back instantly. I would only use this crap if you have absolutely no choice.  If you have a choice, stay far, far away from these products and save your money! Stay far, far away from any products from this company! Nothing works! They are all probably old and expired products. Remember, biologicals don't keep for very long. They only last a couple of weeks to a couple of months depending on the product. If you want products that work, use the chemical stuff from Home Depot. For any bait, the best one has got to be Terro (ant bait), specifically the stakes. For herbicide, nothing beats Roundup despite all the lawsuits. They just work and they are more affordable.

Why I decided to leave this biopesticide company after dedicating years of my life to this company? Management! Everyone that I have ever worked with for years have retired or left the company taking their skills with them. No one stayed to train the new hires. The new hires don't know what they are doing.  Some of the folks who retired were offered contracts, but they were not used when we needed them most. They were only used when the most essential employees left. What pissed me off the most is, they try to make me train my new boss and do all of my new boss's work instead of hiring my old boss to train my new boss. I mean, I should be compensated more if I need to do that. I don't do extra work for free, especially when I was already overworked and overwhelmed.  I loathe the executive vice president because it was all his decision to overwhelm me rather than call my old boss for help. I keep suggesting to him to call my old boss for help, and he refuses. He finally call...

My former biopesticide company offered buy five of a specific fungal biopesticide product and you get one specific fungal biopesticide product for free. If a company offers you this deal, stay far, far away from these products and business. Most companies that offer this type of deal are either not doing well and they want to increase sales or they have expired or expiring products either due to the lack of sales or improper storage to give away for free because they don't want to throw it out. It could even be the combination of both reasons. Companies that are doing well and have quality products rarely offer deals or give away stuff for free. I'm talking specifically about small businesses.  The specific fungal product they are giving away for free takes a week to ferment. This fungal product is made through liquid fermentation. Think about it! Why would they give this product away for free? It's labor intensive and time consuming to produce. It doesn't make sense. R...

Certis Biologicals has a product that kills bees. It's BmJ ( Bacillus mycoides Jacobsen) which induces the plant's systemic resistance. The supernatant of the product kills bees. Basically, the metabolites that this particular microorganism produces in this product is toxic to bees.  We were not aware of this until the regulatory department sent the product out for various tests on animals and insects. This is to ensure that the product will actually be safe in the environment, and it won't disrupt other organisms. When regulatory received the results, they informed our research and development department that it kills bees and we cannot approve the product through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The whole year of work on the product was down the drain. We started over with this project. Instead of eliminating the product, we decided to wash the product meaning diluting the supernatant with water so the metabolites will be lower than detectable levels. They hope...

Biopesticides are effective depending on the microorganism and if the product is on spec. Most of the time products like Bacillus thuringiensis  are effective since they have been studied for years and extensively. Products like this are in spore form. They are less likely to degrade as fast as fungal products. Fungal products have the shortest shelf life even though they are in conidia and blastospore forms. Biologicals DO NOT have a long shelf life compare to chemicals.  For the products that are manufactured from my former company, they may not be effective at all. The products are constantly below spec and contaminated. The manufacturing site is a disaster. They don't do any quality control at the manufacturing site. They always try to send it to headquarters, and have the R&D department test the products for quality control. They also don't clean the fermenters after each run. Since they don't have the capacity to produce all of their products, they use the same fe...

Biopesticides are considered safer than chemical pesticides. They mainly target the organic farming sector. As a former employee of a biopesticide company who worked in the Research and Development department, I am not sure if biopesticides are safer than chemical pesticides. I used to work for a biopesticide company for years before I decided to quit because of new management who were incompetent. That is besides the point. The point is the company was a mess. We had a sketchy executive vice president, who will always do unethical things to get these biopesticides approve. He didn't care about the consequences or the safety of the employees. We could have gotten in trouble legally! We avoided that by using the executive vice president's name in everything. Hahaha. One example will be testing batches of a biopesticide product for human pathogen contamination. The test results will come back with high levels of human pathogen contamination. These human pathogens we tested for we...