Let’s Talk About Cockroaches

"If you are in the food business and simply leaving pest control to a provider and that’s your strategy, you’re destined to fail,” said Marc Fintz, chief compliance officer at All Natural Products in Bergen, N.J. “There has to be an integrated strategy of working together with the provider, your staff, the production team and management. There is a lot of education and self-auditing required.”

Effective pest management to prevent and control cockroaches and other insects and rodents calls for an integrated, cross-departmental IPM approach across vendors. The bottom line is maintaining quality, safety and integrity.

“Sanitation is a part of IPM,” said Robert Powitz, Ph.D., MPH, RS, DLAAS, forensic sanitarian and president of R.W. Powitz & Associates, P.C., out of Old Saybrook, Conn. He works with clients who are cleaning up after damaging audits or concerned about compliance issues.

“We conduct a sanitary survey and tackle issues that could introduce pests to facilities in the first place,” he said.

Powitz said pest management is wrapped into an overarching quality control package. Each working part must contribute, and any loose screw will impact an entire facility.

“Once you get protocols under control, the audit is nothing,” he said.

Fluid communication is a must. So is owning the process.

Jordan Hansen is the production manager at Trout Lake Farm in Ephrata, Wash., part of an herb processing operation. The company’s pest control technician visits weekly, and Hansen walks the floor with him to ask questions and discuss the prevention program.

“I want to walk alongside him and see what is on the glue boards and hear that he hasn’t had any captures,” he said. “I’ll also ask about trends in our area that are important to know about. If a facility 20 miles down the road is experiencing an infestation, we want to be hyper-vigilant so we don’t experience the same.”

How do we speak the same language?

Plunkett’s Pest Control’s Field Training Coordinator Patrick Davis discovered a communications game-changer while completing coursework to earn credentials as a Certified Professional – Food Safety (CP-FS) and a Certified in Comprehensive Food Safety (CCFS) designation.

“The shocking thing to me is a pest program is not considered a food safety issue — it’s considered a quality issue,” he said. “This helped me understand how to talk to upper-level managers at food processing facilities.”

The terminology resonates, particularly when pointing out areas of improvement where pest risks are evident, Davis said.