Business pest control – Why it is important to have it.
We were called out by the owner of a Japanese restaurant as the staff had seen 1 or 2 German cockroaches during the daytime. They were walking over the customer tables when people were eating there. The German cockroaches were being found in the ice box and dead ones in and around the kitchen.
There is a rule of thumb we use, especially when it comes to cockroaches. If you can spot them in the daytime then you have a bigger problem than you can imagine. These insects prefer dark, warm, and damp locations. They are also nocturnal by nature but when the numbers get too many, if they don’t feel threatened they will scavenge for food during the day. Cockroaches breed exceptionally quickly and don’t have a special diet. They will eat everything and anything. A female cockroach can lay around 4 to 8 egg capsules in her 1 year lifetime. In each egg capsule – aka oothecae – there can be up to 48 eggs. So one female can lay around 250 eggs in her lifetime. It can take 30 days for the egg to hatch and then a further 40 – 125 days for the nymphs to turn into adults where they can then mate. if you split the amount of eggs in half, there would now be 125 females laying 250 eggs. You are now at around 30,000 eggs in just one year. In the second year, you have 15,000 females multiplied by 250 eggs making a total of 3.7 million eggs.
We use monitors to establish how bad the infestation is, the picture shows several monitors before we carried out any treatment. It took several visits to get the infestation under control and stopped using a variety of different methods. From gel treatments, insecticide sprays, and removal of panels to get to the back of fridges, freezers, light switches, and anywhere there is warmth and an electrical current. Condensers and compressors in fridges and freezers are perfect breeding grounds.
Cockroaches carry more diseases, bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites than any other insect and rodent. They carry a serious risk to human health and well-being. They can contaminate food surfaces with their saliva, feces, and body parts and cause sicknesses such as salmonella, typhoid fever, dysentery, cholera, leprosy, and polio. They can also trigger allergies like asthma attacks. Female German cockroaches carry their eggs for 30 days until they hatch so this is why it is important to not tread on a cockroach as it can release up to 48 eggs and they will scatter and be harder to control.
Business pest control contracts are important if you value your customers, your reputation, and your business being kept open. Rodents and insects can cause illnesses to your customers, which in turn can lead to negative reviews on your sites, customers not returning and your business going under. Also if the EHO wants to investigate your premises, if they find problems that are a risk to human health they will either give you a warning or shut the premises down, this will mean it will go in the local paper with the business owner’s reputation being damaged. With a business pest control contract you are covered for all pests, whether you need rodent control, or any form of insect removal.
Unfortunately, we come across many restaurants, food shops, takeaway joints, food storage units, guest houses, and pubs that do not have any reliable pest control in place. It can come down to either affordability or the fact they don’t feel they need it and can do it themselves. You can’t sign off your own work so you can falsify your business being clear of pests when actually it isn’t. It just takes one mouse, rat or cockroach to be seen by the customer and the premises could be facing fines, bad reviews, and visits from the EHO.
Our advice on eating out is to check the reviews before going there, and also look for the green badge which shows the level of food hygiene rating. If you suspect to have had food poisoning or felt ill after a take then consider speaking to the business owner and find out if they have pest control in place and ask for their hygiene certificate.