Why You Need Remote Monitoring Technology As Part of Your IPM Program

October 7th, 2021:

IPM or pest control has remained largely unchanged for decades in commercial food processing and distribution facilities.  The current best practice service model consists of several multicatch type devices placed at regular intervals around the interior perimeter of the facility, and tamper resistant bait stations placed in the same manner around the exterior perimeter.  The service technician moves through the facility checking the devices, making some notes, and moving on to the next facility.  The trap checking part of their service consumes about 80% of their time at your facility.  While this service model concept is widely accepted as “Pest Control”, the unfortunate reality is that this is not Pest Control and offers little value in protecting your brand or consumer safety.  It is little more than a commoditized trap checking service, not based upon science, understanding of your risks, or preventing problems.  Interior perimeter rodent traps will never prevent a rodent issue, solve a rodent issue, or tell you that you have a rodent issue.   They are compliance devices based upon an arbitrary audit standard. Rodents and other pests do not live on that 18” white line, they live where the resources are such as production, packaging, storage, anywhere there is food and harborage.  Most often, pests are sent to you and brought right through the door bypassing any control measure you may have in place.

If we can let technology take care of the low value trap checking requirement, the technician can be freed up to reallocate their time to higher value tasks such as identifying and mitigating true risks to your brand and consumer safety,  root cause investigations,  Customer complaint reduction, recall prevention.  These technicians are experts in pest related risks, use them.  Implementing remote technologies will allow them to provide true IPM/Pest Control and protect your brand.