Rodent Prevention Tips Served à la Carte

I’m sitting at one of my favorite cafés, drinking a nice cup of tea and thinking about pest control.

When you look around the café, it’s really a miniature food processing site. There’s plenty of food, lots of people, audits to conform to and the risk of pests.

When thinking about rodents, what can we learn from a visit to a café?

MAKE IT DIFFICULT.

Rodents and sanitation are closely linked. It’s part of any good pest control program. In a facility that processes or stores food, there’s no way to realistically remove all the food. I would never get my blueberry scone and tea!

There are still ways to incorporate sanitation to deter rodents or at least make it harder for them to get to the resources. Imagine if I have to squeeze through a locked door, climb up on a high shelf and chew through a thick bucket to get to my scones. That’s not very tempting, and I would likely go to another location that is easier to access.

YOU’RE TRAPPED!

As I walk into my café (or any other food site), it’s very common to see metal multicatch traps by the doors. Trapping is a great way to capture incoming rodents. We know many rodent incursions start around doors; it’s easy access for them. When you are small and scared, those dark boxes look like safety.

Audit standards require that there be adequate rodent control at a site. As I walk through the door, I should encounter the trap. That is, until that trap is only big enough for a small child, and I can’t fit into it.

Rats are bigger than mice. The multicatch traps are intended for mice. While they could catch a smaller rat, it happens rarely. If rats are the predominant issue at the site, those traps aren’t going to be helpful.

Even if there is a nice bit of blueberry scone in the trap, if I can’t fit into the opening, I’m going to continue inside and cause problems. Larger snap traps are needed.

Fun Fact: One of the largest rats ever found was just this year, clocking in at a little over 22 inches (the size of a small cat!).

DOOR TO DOOR.

Looking around the café, I see traps on either side of every door. But one door is a fire door that is never opened, another door on the side is permanently blocked, and the front and back doors are used frequently.

This is the same in other food sites, though they have a lot more doors to cover. Do we need a trap on both sides of every door in the structure? Absolutely not. Some of you may be yelling at me, “Chelle, it’s an audit standard, we HAVE to!” Nope. Almost all of the main audit standards require that “bait stations or other rodent monitoring or control devices shall be appropriately located.” That quote comes from the BRCGS Global Standard for Food Safety. There is no mention of door location placement or spacing.

As a patron of this café, I know I can’t get in through the side door or the fire door, so I’m going for an easier opening. A great deal of time and energy is spent checking traps that will never capture a rodent. That time can be spent doing better inspections. That inspection can look for sanitation issues and exclusion opportunities to catch them before they become serious.

Fun Fact: SQF and AIB standards say almost the same thing as BRC about traps and bait stations.

PATIO SEASON.

Looking around the outside of the café, many areas are inhospitable to rodents. Having bait stations equally spaced outdoors means some stations will never have a rodent come to them. Others may not be spaced close enough to deal with the rodent pressure.

I’d rather spend my time in the cooler, shaded vegetation areas, or maybe by the dumpster out back with all the easily accessible food. Other areas are too open for them, and they are much less likely to be there.

Fun fact: Roof rats in particular are known for infesting fruit trees.

LIGHT UP THE ROOM.

As I sleepily stumble in looking for my caffeine and sugar fix, I’m avoiding all those bright lights. Being mostly nocturnal, rodents stick to the shadows and darker areas whenever they can too.

Looking around a food site, there are darker areas under equipment, around product racks and tucked in corners. Even at night in facilities that run all hours, lights still produce shadows. These areas are often overlooked when it comes to sanitation as well. Traps placed in these areas are much more likely to capture rodents than those equally spaced traps all around the perimeter of the walls.

Like me when it’s too early, rodents want to avoid people, crowded spaces and high traffic areas.

Fun Fact: Historical data from traps and bait stations can easily show which devices have never had a rodent hit and which ones can be more active. Let the data tell a story.

HEAT WAVE.

While outside it feels like being boiled alive, inside, the café is pleasantly cool. When it is absurdly hot outside, rodents may look to move indoors, where it is more temperate. Under extreme heat, food and water sources can dry up outdoors. This makes the structure, with all those good smells emanating out, much more appealing. This can also happen after extreme weather events like droughts, fires and heavy rain.

Indoors, rodents will gravitate to warmer areas. In the tiny café’s kitchen, there are refrigerators, freezers, dishwashing areas, ice makers and more that have a little motor that creates heat. That equipment can have insulation that mice in particular will get into to nest. In large food facilities, there is all that equipment and more for rodents to find comfortable homes in.

Fun Fact: The house mouse can survive and reproduce at 31o Fahrenheit.

PERKS OF (NOT) BEING A WALLFLOWER.

As I sit down with my cup of tea, I lean against the wall to watch people come and go. Rodents typically stick to the edges too.

Looking around the café, I see all the monitoring/control devices around the edge. When rodents accidentally get in, it’s very common for them to run the walls where they feel slightly less exposed.

There are numerous other ways for rodents to get in, like being delivered in on supplies. If I only look at the perimeter, it would be easy to miss all the dark, protected areas under the main counter or up above on the beams and conduits. It’s important to get away from the walls and look inward and upwards.

Think of all the racking, equipment and product that isn’t against a wall. If a mouse is delivered in with a raw ingredient, that mouse may stay there until populations increase. Even then, as they slowly start to venture out, they could still be in the center of that area, not against a wall. That population could get missed until the numbers are at infestation levels.

Fun fact: If left unchecked, two house mice could turn into over one million in just one year.

SQUEAKY CLEAN.

Before I leave, I make sure the crumbs from my blueberry scones are cleaned up and I haven’t spilled any tea on the table. The café is (hopefully) going to be cleaned during the day if they have time, and then there is a more thorough clean at the end of the day.

As I see an employee wipe down the counter, I notice the cloth is grey and the water a sickly brown. Wet mop heads, dust mops and cleaning cloths also get dirty. They may be spreading sanitation issues rather than eliminating them. That creates potential to spread feces and urine, which can carry foodborne pathogens.

Whether it’s the few employees in the café or the hundreds that work at a food processing site, training is essential. Workers should not only have all the tools they need, but training on how, when and where to use them. People need to know who to go to when they need clean dishcloths or another mop head. Drain cleaners are highly effective, unless they are dumped down the middle of the drain and don’t touch the edges. Cleaning seems pretty self-explanatory, but without training, employees could all have different opinions of what “clean” means.

Fun Fact: The CDC lists 13 different diseases directly transmitted by rodents and 17 indirectly spread by rodents.

Just because sanitation can’t ever be perfect, it isn’t an excuse to do nothing. Even though exclusion won’t be completely flawless, it’s not a justification to not address it. Knowing how to look at rodent issues can point out where efforts need to be concentrated. Examining pest control from a slightly different perspective can shed new light on the pest control program and identify areas for improvement.