Pest management

Consumers have an unspoken expectation that the food they are eating will be safe and not make them sick.

One of the important controls that food businesses must have in place to ensure their food is safe, is good hygiene. Part of this is the requirement to have suitable pest management.

Pests in a food business are the rodents and insects (both flying and crawling). All food businesses are required, according to the Food Standards Code, to have suitable pest control in place.

Although there are some very small food businesses that do their own pest control, it is not a recommended practice. This is because these people are not specialists in pest control and may also be using chemicals that should not be in a food business, making it a significant potential food safety issue.

All pest chemicals should be food grade so that if a small amount makes it into food, it will not cause harm to a healthy adult. This is an issue because some of the chemicals that have been used for rodent control cause internal bleeding, so these should not be inside a food business at any time.

Inside food areas, there should be traps not poison, this is to ensure that any captured rodents are contained and not likely to go off somewhere to become potential contamination sources when they die. There are a variety of traps available, from those that kill, to those that simply only contain.

The placement of all traps, bait stations insectocutors (bug zappers) and sprays is the key to any pest control program and it is this knowledge that you are paying for when you use a professional pest controller.

It is strongly recommended that a food business not use just a local domestic pest controller but one that works with food businesses specifically. Therefore the well known names in the industry are well worth approaching about the development and implementation of a pest management program that is suitable for each specific food business.