The Top 3 "Hot Spots" Inside Your Facility

As much as you prioritize keeping pests out of your facility, something has slipped past your preventive measures. You’re not alone – food processing facilities have so much to offer pests. From dry goods and moisture to warmth and dark spaces. To help you narrow down your search for invaders, we’ve got some common hot spots.

Look to the floor.

Floor drains are easy to overlook, but these hiding spaces are a perfect habitat for pests like flies and cockroaches. It doesn’t matter if they are wet or dry (double whammy), because they like both options. An effective fix for this is to equip drains with a second strainer to prevent pests from hanging out in the floor drain, but also to help prevent them from entering the facility. Floor drains are possible entrance points, too, with their connection to a network of pipes. For more tips on how to flush pests down the drain, download Outside In: Mapping Food Processing’s Pest Hot Spots.

That storage closet may have more in it than just shelves.

Let’s be honest; no one really likes cleaning the storage closet. This relatively undisturbed environment appeals to pests that like to hide in areas no one regularly inspects. Make sure to inspect anything going into storage before it even enters your facility to ensure any pests transported to your facility don’t get stored there. And keep products off the floor, away from the wall and spaced out on the shelves to minimize the places pests can reside undetected.

Trash is their treasure.

Rodents can gnaw through just about anything, so those boxes and debris on the floor are an easy target. Don’t let trash pile up. And remember that the garbage that smells foul to us smells like an all-you-can-eat buffet to pests. Routinely remove odorous trash from your facility into dumpsters stationed away from the building.

Monitoring your facility is not a part-time job, and with the size and scale of operations, you have to rely on more than your own eyes. Engage your employees to help scout for pests when they are cleaning, inspecting incoming goods and retrieving ingredients from storage. And make sure your pest management provider is vigilant about checking the hottest hot spots to freeze pest in their tracks.

For more information on where to look for pests inside your facility, check out Outside In: Mapping Food Processing’s Pest Hot Spots.