Stored Product Pests in the Food Distribution/Food Warehouse Setting
By Brandon Oldham (CP-FS) Sr. Corporate Food Safety Specialist
While a lot of focus is given to pest prevention and control in the production world, I want to move on down the chain of custody to warehousing and distribution. There are a multitude of ways stored product pests and their issues arise in this setting.
Warehouses are high-volume, high-traffic hubs for products that come from all over the world. They can house a vast variety of items. This makes an integrated pest management system very complex and involved.
We can all agree that prevention is the best approach to pest management. Doing your part to be without, or to minimize exposure, is the most cost-effective way to protect your reputation and prevent things like product damage, contamination, customer compensation, and worst of all, recalls.
Inbound inspection could arguably be the most important part of exclusion and prevention. Large vessels filled with massive quantities of sustenance that come from a vast array of environments and climates, could potentially be the perfect storm to triggering an infestation in your facility. Thorough product inspections being performed by trained individuals should be an integral part of your pest management program.
The Trojan Horse
What to look for in food distribution and food warehouse facilities
High-risk products should be prioritized and heavily scrutinized, but no trailer or shipment should be omitted. All employees involved with the inbound process should, at the very least, have knowledge of what to look for.
• Insects and evidence of harborage and damage caused by them.
• Rodents and the indications of activity.
• As well as other signs of the product or trailer itself having been affected by poor sanitation and/or poor pest prevention practices from wherever or whoever the product is coming from.
Zero tolerance of any stored product pests and/or their evidence is best practice, but thresholds should be set to prompt rejections or corrective actions. Proper pest identification will help guide productive conversations around protecting the supply chain.
Training of employees can range from initial on-boarding/orientation training, to one point lesson communication. Utilizing employee engagement meetings and different kinds of visual media can help with that transmission. Real time, hands on experience is worth its weight in food as well. Employees being able to put their eyes on issues seen by other team members can create a positive pest exclusion environment, culture, and confidence in a support system.
The job isn’t done here….
Inspection of storage areas
To make certain the product that has been inspected stays pest-free, the probing must continue within the storage areas. As confident as your receiving team may be about their process and execution, sometimes things can be overlooked or, quite frankly, invisible to the naked eye at the time of receipt.
Exterior pressure, environmental pressure, seasonal pressure, and the fact that the common human is present, can all potentially expose the product stored in your warehouse as well.
All efforts should be made to close off any and all entry points from the outside world.
A preventative maintenance program (PMP) should include pest-proofing activities. Things like door seals, dock leveler gaskets, screening on fans, vents, and drains should be in place and damage-free. Walls, floors, and ceilings should be crack and crevice-free so they can be easily cleaned to prevent any access or harborage areas. All these items need to be replaced routinely as part of the PMP. Good employee practices need to be communicated so actions can be monitored and accountability can take place. Leaving doors open, not cleaning up after one’s self, or improperly performing sanitation duties could attract pests and trigger an infestation, whether it be from a food source, harborage initiator, or accidental introduction from the exterior.
Inspections of all areas of the warehouse are crucial. Trained eyes should be looking for all things mentioned during the inbound inspection process. Areas to inspect include; the warehouse as a whole (roofs, ceilings, floors and drains), utility rooms, office areas, break rooms, and other nooks and crannies conducive to pest activity. This includes drop ceilings and crawl spaces. Monitoring devices should be deployed strategically to help with these inspections.
Questions to Consider When Inspecting a Warehouse
• What pests are associated with the type of product you store?
• What pests are part of the ecosystem that surround your facility or exist in nature within your region, climate zone?
• Are there other businesses around your property that might naturally attract pest activity (farming, landfill, rail yards)?
• Do any of your employees bring bagged lunches, or have locker rooms where belongings from home are stored?
All these things should be considered when completing a pest assessment on your building. This pest risk assessment is to be utilized to decide what type of monitoring devices are needed and where they should initially be placed. Other assessments might be done after inspection. Monitoring device data is recorded over time so high-pressure areas can be inspected appropriately and corrective actions can help minimize activity.
Sanitation should be top priority when handling food, as it also goes hand-in-hand with pest prevention. In a lot of ways sanitation is pest control. Having a sanitation program, including both the interior and exterior of the building, eliminates food sources and harborage material.
Cleaning in and around your warehouse also helps make inspections much easier. It is much easier to find pest evidence with a floor or ground space free of product, debris, and dust/dirt. Whether this be droppings, urine, webbing, cast skins, or the pest itself. Sanitation work can also uncover things needing to be fixed by maintenance.
Preserve Your Reputation
Outbound inspections are your last chance to be proactive in most cases. Just as trained individuals are responsible for bringing clean product in, trained individuals need to verify the product stayed pest-free while in possession of it. This is done by inspecting before loading for shipping. There needs to be an inspection of the conveyance vessel.
This guarantees it is in sound condition, without contaminants that will expose the product while loading or while being transported to its destination. Just like inspecting your facility, ensure the container has no passage to the exterior through cracks, holes, or damage to door seals.
In all steps mentioned throughout this article, we need to make sure that records are created, filled out completely, and retained. Examples are; inbound inspection reports, facility inspection reports and monitoring device data, outbound inspection reports, training records, rejection records, sanitation records, and 3rd party reports whether it be pest control or outside cleaning companies.
If it’s not written down it never happened. These documents can all help provide clarity as to where a problem with pests may have started, and could potentially keep your company’s name out of the negative headlines. Having these documents will also support/guide corrective actions with vendors or help deflect or denounce blame from a customer or consumer.
In summary, protecting your storage facility from pests is just as important as protecting a production facility. In many cases, warehouses store product from multiple vendors. If a problem presents itself within that warehouse it could potentially damage the reputation of many brand names, regardless of fault.
In every case, the cost of a well-run, dynamic pest prevention program will always cost less than an infestation, especially one that has customer or consumer impact.
The following are images courtesy of by Brandon Oldham (CP-FS), Sr. Corporate Food Safety Specialist
Examples of Rodent issues:
Photo 1: Large amounts of rodent droppings on an incoming trailer –Brandon Oldham (CP-FS), Sr. Corporate Food Safety Specialist
Photo 2: A living mouse inside a food package –Brandon Oldham (CP-FS), Sr. Corporate Food Safety Specialist
Photo 3: Mouse droppings on food containers –Brandon Oldham (CP-FS), Sr. Corporate Food Safety Specialist
Examples of Insect Issues
Photo 1: Cigarette beetles in a package of pasta –Brandon Oldham (CP-FS), Sr. Corporate Food Safety Specialist
Photo 2: Indian meal moth webbing and feeding on birdseed –Brandon Oldham (CP-FS), Sr. Corporate Food Safety Specialist
Photo 3: Beetles inside a package of rice –Brandon Oldham (CP-FS), Sr. Corporate Food Safety Specialist
Photo 4: Red-legged ham beetle emerging from a punctured package –Brandon Oldham (CP-FS), Sr. Corporate Food Safety Specialist
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