[Best Practices] Getting Past the Excuses for Pests

1. “We never find anything anyway.”

Not finding any pests in your incoming goods is a good thing — similar to not finding Salmonella or Listeria on your processing equipment. But the fact that you have pages and pages of incoming goods inspection records noting “Nothing found, Nothing found,” from yesterday and today, does not mean that nothing will be found tomorrow. 

Keeping good records enables the plant to validate the quality of its ingredients and the fact that no contamination was found. Finding contamination, on the other hand, can alert a plant to a non-conforming supplier, particularly if logbooks begin showing repeated pest presence from a single supplier. As explained by Mark “Shep” Sheperdigian, vice president of technical services for Rose Pest Solutions in Troy, Mich., “The best predictor of the future is past experience. If you can predict what’s going to happen, then you can start to manage it.”

2. “It’s too expensive and time-consuming.”

“Very rarely does an ounce of prevention cost more than a pound of cure,” Sheperdigian said. It can be hard to look at those pages of “Nothing found” and not see them as simply dollar signs of wasted labor. But you have to balance that cost against the cost of bringing in an infested commodity and setting it on a shelf with other susceptible products. 

Some processors just say, “Hey, I’ve got to get it in here,” said Orkin Technical Manager Pat Copps. They’re in a rush, the ingredient is needed for today’s run, and the inspection process is skipped over (if they even have an inspection process in the first place). “Then,” Copps said, “they call us when it’s a little on the late side. I had that happen yesterday.”

3. “I don’t know what to look for.”

While an inspection will have some variations based on the characteristics of the pests to which your product is most susceptible, there are a number of visual inspection practices that should be standard for any incoming goods pest inspection. “Pull a skid and inspect it,” Sheperdigian said. If you see something, inspect it closely; if you find something, call your pest management specialist and pull the delivery away from the plant to keep it from contaminating other goods. In addition, visual inspections should include:

• Look for the insect itself — live or dead; whole or fragments. “If there’s stuff flying around, that should get your attention,” Sheperdigian said.
• Inspect packaging for signs of infestation — damage, droppings, webbing, frass, small insect entry and exit holes.
• Check areas where pests are most likely to harbor, said Myron Baumann, assistant vice president and regional manager for St. Paul, Minn.-based Ecolab Pest Elimination. Particular attention should be paid to unlit, unexposed areas such as in between packaging folds and layers of bags. Look under shrinkwrap; check for openings in packaging; take samples of the product. 
• Look at the general condition of the transportation unit. “If it’s nice and clean and looks like it’s been well taken care of, that’s a good sign,” said Earl Hallberg, technical services manager for Presto-X in Omaha, Neb. But if it is dirty and unmaintained with tailings in the corner, spilled product or buildup in cracks, the chances of having pests lurking about are much greater.
• Check incoming packaging materials, especially those made of wood or cardboard. Examine wooden pallets. Carefully inspect burlap bags since burlap is a material that “lends itself to issues and provides harborage for pests,” according to Copps.
• If the product is one that creates dust, check those areas for larval trails.

4. “We have high employee turnover.”

“In plants, it’s one of those things that’s easy to overlook, that’s easy to forget about, but that’s very important,” Hallberg said. Pest inspections should be a critical component of training for any employee who will be dealing with incoming goods. Implementing a logbook system that includes a page of basic identifying characteristics for the pest(s) to which your product is most susceptible and a list of visual checks (see No. 3) can provide a simple training and application process while taking a huge step in pest prevention and product safety.

5. “That’s just the way it is.”

Some products do have a higher susceptibility to particular pests or are more difficult to inspect, but that should give plants even more incentive to check. 

A processor was having a problem with his product being called in by the buyer for pest problems. Because the product was so susceptible to the stored product pest being found, the processor didn’t question the problem but just assumed that there was an issue with failed fumigation. At the end of the season, however, he ended up with an extreme amount of chargeback. 

Finally deciding to trace back the issue, post-fumigation samples were taken by both the fumigator and fumigant manufacturer, but showed no sign of the pests. Instead, the processor eventually found that the problem was actually in his warehouse, where a pest infestation had started and was contaminating all new products placed into storage. 

Regular review of incoming goods records would have shown that the ingredients were not infested at that point and would, perhaps, have raised a red flag the very first time the processor’s product was returned. Further inspection at that point could have revealed the warehouse infestation, which could have then been eliminated, saving money for the company as well as its brand reputation. 

While there are any number of reasons — well beyond the top five — that processors may give for not conducting pest inspections on incoming goods, it is a practice that can actually save time and money for the plant and add an extra layer of product safety.