Pest Management for Food Businesses: 6 Steps to Eliminate Pests

In the Philippines, dengue prevention is essential because this viral disease is a serious threat to millions of Filipinos. However, do you know that pest control methods are not just practiced to avoid the numerous health problems that insects spread? Aside from carrying diseases, insects also destroy crops and inhabit food facilities, affecting food businesses everywhere in the country. As a result, companies in the food and beverage industry resort to practicing pest management techniques to try and eliminate these threats.

As a food business owner, it is your job to ensure that the products you offer consumers are not only delectable but safe as well. To achieve this, you should know how to get rid of the pests that might unknowingly contaminate the food you serve. Check these six steps that will help you efficiently eliminate pests in your business!

Step 1: Inspection

The first step in pest management is inspection. This means that before anything else, you should inspect the facility to check if there are insects residing in the corners and rarely visited areas of your place. In some food processor businesses, they conduct weekly inspections to make sure that there is no trace of pest infestation in their site. The routine check-up should consist of checking possible pest hideouts, such as storage areas, receiving docks, and employee break rooms. Moreover, you should inspect possible entry points, including food and water sources or harborage zones.

Step 2: Preventive Action

The inspection will reveal if there is an existing case of or there is a risk of pest infestation in your building. If, after the inspection you found out that there are no signs of insect outbreak in your facility but there are risks of attracting pests, then your next step is implementing preventative methods. In short, do not wait for insects to invade your compound. Instead, prevent them from entering your site in the first place to avoid further problems in the future. 

Step 3: Identification of Pests

If after the inspection, it became clear that there are signs of pest infestation in your business, then simple preventive methods will not do. Instead, you have to find a way to eliminate them. The first step in doing this is

Step 4: Analysis

After determining which types of pests are in your building, you have to identify why they are there in the first place. Do your walls and floors have holes? Is there an accumulation of food debris and moisture in certain areas in your site? Understanding why and how they can enter your facility will help you determine which pest control treatment to use.

 Step 5: Selection of Treatment

There are two types of pest treatment: chemical and non-chemical control. Try non-chemical treatments first because they are not as risky – compared to the alternative – to your food safety program. If the problem continues to persist, that’s when you should start to consider chemical treatments. However, it is important to remember to apply treatments on select areas for certain pests only. This means that you should perform different methods for various pests because each infestation is unique. If you need help identifying which treatment to use, contact a pest control company. They can help you determine which to use or if the two treatments must be combined to effectively eliminate the pests. 

Step 6: Monitoring

Pest management does not stop once treatments are applied. To ensure that your business is truly safe from pesky insects and rodents, you have to monitor various things. First, you have to monitor the pest control process. See to it that the methods you chose to employ are applied correctly. Failure to properly implement treatment might result to the continued persistence of the problem. Next, you have to monitor the pest activity in your building while treatments are being applied. This will help you understand if the method that you chose is effective or not. Lastly, you have to monitor pest activity in your site even after your building was declared free of pests. This will help you determine if your building is starting to attract unwanted guests once again. 

Pest management is essential in the food and beverage industry. That is why, as a business owner, you are encouraged to take note of the pest management steps listed above. This will not only keep your building safe from pest infestation; it will also keep you, your employees, and your customers safe from the diseases that insects and rodents carry.