When faced with a food safety auditor visit, a well-documented pest management program is essential for a successful audit. Well maintained and up to date documentation leaves a great first impression to auditors that your facility’s pest management program is efficient and effective. When pest management scores can account for up to 20 percent of a final score, it goes without saying that you’ll want to have all your bases covered. In this article, we will cover the key areas of your food processing plant’s pest management program documentation.
Scope of Service
A scope of service document will outline roles and responsibilities of your pest management partner as well as your own staff. This should also identify specific pests your pest management program is targeting and the control methods you’ll be applying.
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Service Reports
With all planned and unplanned service calls, your pest management company should be creating documents detailing the services that were provided along with the dates they occurred. It’s important that these service reports are as comprehensive as possible because they’ll serve as proof points to your auditors that your facility and pest management company are following the guidelines and processes in all pest prevention and control efforts.
Pesticide Usage Log
A complete and thorough pesticide usage log is a critical piece of documentation in any food safety audit. All pest management materials, their trade names, and active ingredients should be documented along with when and where they were applied. You’ll need to have your pest management professional sign this log as well.
Facility Map
Beyond keeping an updated map of the pest control devices used in your facility’s interior and exterior, it’s also very important that you keep this map up to date. Your auditor will check your map against your facility and inconsistencies will count against your audit score.
Pest Logs
Your auditor will also be looking for thorough documentation of all pest activity in your facility. This documentation should include complete logs of all pest sightings as well as a report on pest activity trends drawn from your pest sighting logs. In addition to this documentation, your auditor will be looking for logs of all recommendations from your pest management company and the resulting corrective actions. In order to score well on these aspects of your audit, it’s as important that you’ve followed our pest management company’s recommendations as it is that you have it all documented.
Working with a dedicated pest management company like Wil-Kil Pest Control is the best way to ensure a successful food safety audit. In addition to providing the highest level of quality Integrated Pest Management (IPM) services, our pre-audit IPM service adds the quality assurance to ensure the highest scoring on audit day. Contact our commercial pest control specialists to learn more.