"In-house" Pest Control Versus Contracted Pest Control

Our catering company has sidelined into maintaining vending machines for local business providing sandwiches, salads, savouries, microwaveables, crisps, confectionery, snacks etc. We have a new modern production unit with about 20 employees; I'm putting all GMP/QA systems in place and am a bit stuck on should I contract out pest control or try to keep in house? Does anyone on here do their own pest control and what are the pros and cons?

TIA - JL

Hello John,

I imagine it would depend to what lengths you are prepared to go to for your in-house pest control, If you take the in-house route are you prepared to let your technician concentrate on his pest control duties or is there a possibility that they may be diverted to other duties as part of his contract hours?

Do you know of your needs with reference to IPM in your unit?

Do you have adequate information/training to manage the technician if he is a stand alone in case of emergencies?

Do you have the correct paperwork, monitoring forms and treatment reports ect ect available to you?

If not then you need to consider his complete wage packet plus appropriate training and set up costs if you cannot tempt a competently trained pest control technician to join your team, all this would at the very least meet the 22k bracket pa.

I you choose carefully and go for the smaller specialist pest control operator you could save considerably on those costs by contracting out. I am speaking as the owner of a small pest control business so I am somewhat biast but as an independant I can offer the advise that the large companies do not necessarily offer the best value for money.

I don`t know the area that you work in to offer you a suitable candidate but contact the BPCA if you are a regional/ national company they should be able to point you in the right direction.

Failing that please feel free to contact me direct and we can have a chat.

Bunny

I take your point on the docs and record keeping which could be a problem, though we have a model doc file to follow as we use rentokil at the other unit. With rentokil they are only on site once a month so noit a full time job really. I think we would need to buy a few bait boxes for outside and inside, some sticky insect monitors and couple of uv fly control devices. we could monitor these weekly and if we ever did have a problem we could buy in services from a professional pest control company. Its only a small unit on an industrial est. and the building is pretty modern with no windows or doors in the production hall so I don't think we would have many problems. Suppose I got to balance as to the bother versus a couple of grand a year. Thank you Bunny you are helping me to think about which way to go.

JL

Hello Leghead,

You sound like you have some knowledge of the requirements for pest control in a food environment, so it depends on how valuable your time is to you. I'm sure putting in all the other GMP systems and getting a new unit off the ground will sap some of your time and energy.

Welcome to the forums both of you.

Regards,

Simon

I take your point on the docs and record keeping which could be a problem, though we have a model doc file to follow as we use rentokil at the other unit. With rentokil they are only on site once a month so noit a full time job really. I think we would need to buy a few bait boxes for outside and inside, some sticky insect monitors and couple of uv fly control devices. we could monitor these weekly and if we ever did have a problem we could buy in services from a professional pest control company. Its only a small unit on an industrial est. and the building is pretty modern with no windows or doors in the production hall so I don't think we would have many problems. Suppose I got to balance as to the bother versus a couple of grand a year. Thank you Bunny you are helping me to think about which way to go.

JL

Hi JL, in my company (egg processing plant) the manager did not want to hire external service, because the hens are sensible to all kind of diseases and we would never be entirely sure if the personnel from an external company would go to another plant (also animal sector) and then come here... so we decided to hire a professional that gives advice on the pesticide, bait stations, etc. and helps on the interpretation of docs, so the cost is not much, and we have the advantage of the specialist know-how anyway.

Regarding to docs, I agree with you that having the some models of documents is enough, anyway you adapt them to your convenience. And does not requiere so much time. In my opinion is possible to have an inhouse pest control program, specialy considering you are a small company, in my case is one of about 200 employees.