Scrutinizing the Scene (AKA: Searching for food)

I’m inspecting a food facility this week and there’s always something interesting that you find. So this week, let’s talk about monitoring.

Why do we monitor? People can walk into a place and just see if there are pests there, right? Sure, especially when populations are high you can see that moth flying or that cockroach scurrying across the floor. Most of our pests are small and many are nocturnal. They don’t want to be seen because that puts them at risk. Our stored product pests may even be buried in some type of food product and therefore not visible. Often, you will only visibly see the pests when there is a massive infestation. By the time there’s a large infestation, it’s much harder and takes much longer to eliminate them.

Monitors are an extra set of eyes, working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They work overnight, in the dark, even when the site is shut down. They can catch pest problems early, before the flour beetles are coming out in the final product or before you see drain flies at every drain. Conducive conditions can be investigated and corrective actions can take place.

There are many ways you can monitor “wrong” though. The facility I am in this week has a moth issue and they are using hanging sticky traps to monitor. However, we also found flour beetles. While they can fly, they typically don’t so a hanging trap isn’t going to work very well. Also, the pheromone in hanging traps is for moths (mostly) so there won’t be the draw that there would be with a dome trap on the floor.

Another way to monitor “wrong” is when the traps aren’t placed in the right location. If a tincat trap is in a location where it keeps getting clipped by forklift traffic, it’s obviously not going to catch any mice. Not a good placement. There are going to be high risk ingredients and/or products that are more likely to have a pest issue. Canned soup has a pretty low chance of having a pest issue, but powdered soup in paper packaging is a possibility. Monitors don’t need to go in low risk areas, they can be placed just in those areas that have the potential for pests.

Continuing with monitoring “wrong” (and this one is one of my big pet peeves) is not doing anything. Unfortunately, this happens a lot. The site I’m in, the technician recorded that there were moths in the traps and even the number of moths. Good start. Next, the tech…… well, the tech didn’t do anything. No conducive conditions listed, no further inspections to find any sources, no treatments, nothing. Basically, it says “I’ve found a fire but I’m going to let it burn the building down and I’m okay with that.” That’s not okay. Especially when that “fire” can spread and go to the grocery store and then to people’s homes.

Some of this (maybe all of this) may sound simple and easy. The problem is, I see this all the time in all sorts of facilities so it isn’t common sense. There are lots of other intricacies that can make monitoring more effective. If you want to make your monitoring program stronger, contact us, we do that.