A commonly held opinion when talking about traditional biological control, is that it is difficult to find successful stories without undesirable side effects. Prof. Christian Borgemeister from the International Center of Insect Physiology and insect Ecology (ICIPE) believes the contrary and he even challenged the audience to give him a recent example of biological control that “went out of control”. “Yes”, he added, “only in the best case scenarios traditional bio-control (BC) works as a stand-alone solution and often it has to be combined with other compatible and “bio-rational” interventions. However, we cannot deny that insects and other organisms deliver a critical environmental service in terms of pest control. ” The problem seems to be that the discussion about BC has been dominated by early mistakes while successfully improved techniques are overlooked; or in the words of Prof. Borgemeister “there is a gap between myths and reality”. Bio-control on the margin According to Prof. Borgemeister, the biggest advantage of classical bio-control is its self-sustainability; meaning that if it works, it requires no further intervention. Two classical examples of successful stories on the margin are the eradication of cassava mealy bug and the control of the fruit fly pest, both in Africa. Ever further, a recent World Bank report on agriculture indicated that no single intervention for pest control has a better cost-benefit ration than traditional BC. This could allow poor countries to reduce their pest problems to acceptable levels (or even eradicate them) at the comparative lower costs. If a country or a region has a pest problem the general advice will be: take a look to the literature to establish if there are precedents to the problem, learn the lessons from other cases, do the necessary experimentation (impact assessment), decide whether complementary and compatible cultural measures are needed and give it a try! Political and research changes needed There is plenty of research work that can be done with BC; unfortunately the term has become “politically incorrect” for many funding institutions (including governments) and not sufficient resources are currently allocated for research. In many countries the introduction of species for BC is virtually impossible, even for scientific objectives. There is a generalise exaggeration of the risks and this is holding back further development on the topic; people seem to forget that if you do good science, risk can be minimalized to manageable levels. In terms of international politics, they are a few trends that could further undermine the applicability of BC. For example, as part of the UN Biodiversity Convention, there is a benefit sharing agreement dealing with biological diversity and many countries and institutions perceive their stock of potential “natural enemies” for pest control as part of their biodiversity portfolio. Basically, countries are assuming that they have a potential solution to future pest control problems while ignoring the risk of becoming a victim of a pest problem. All these will make early action for biological pest control, extremely difficult and expensive.