Effective Solutions for Your Pest and Rodent Challenges

Pests are a major concern for food facilities — offering warmth, shelter, food, and harborage points, your facility is a pest’s haven, making it even more imperative to stay vigilant, even with integrated pest management and sanitation strategies in place.

We’ve seen just about every pest scenario over IFC’s 85 years. The goal for a pest expert is to create a long-term, sustainable pest management program and to respond to the unusual, unpredictable, or sometimes-thought ‘unsolvable’ pest challenges.

Solutions Begin with Thorough Investigations

One unusual story came from a client experiencing an uptick in rodent activity — something they historically never had an issue with. IFC immediately began a deep dive inspection and were quickly able to determine two culprits: the facility’s ongoing construction project and rodent activity in railcars delivering product.

The ongoing construction created multiple harborage points around the building’s exterior and roof. This was caused by equipment, construction waste, and supplies not being handled properly on-site, giving the rodents ample entry points and harborage areas. When IFC reviewed the rodent capture data and completed a visual inspection of the food product being shipped in via railway, we were able to determine that the railcars being offloaded had a significant amount of rodent activity in them, creating yet another entry point and food safety concern for the client.

The solution? We put together an action plan to eliminate the rodent issue quickly. Initially starting with mass rodent trapping, we then recommended and performed a fumigation to reset the rodent population to zero and quickly get the facility back to business as usual. IFC suggested improved ways to store materials and trained the client on heightened inbound inspections.

Bad Reputation, Great Solution

Something we hear from potential or new clients is the hesitation to perform a fumigation because of cost, downtime, or even misinformation. Fumigations are a unique and valuable tool because they will reset all life stages of pest populations to zero quickly. They are not only a great tool in emergency or quarantine situations, but also as part of an integrated pest management plan.

Pest experts are focused on investigating, inspecting, identifying, and resolving pest issues with cost- and time-effective solutions! It is important to understand how to utilize all the tools available to prevent and eliminate pests. Fumigations can be a versatile and cost-effective solution that create a pest-free environment, setting your team, facility, and ongoing pest management plan up for success moving forward.

Whether it’s an ongoing pest challenge that can’t seem to be tackled or you’re looking for a long-term pest strategy, you can count on IFC to be focused on one thing: your success.