Be Ready When the Auditor Comes Knocking
By Bill Melville, Quality Assurance Director, Orkin PCO Services
General Integrated Pest Management OrkinKeeping up-to-date with these documents is an easy way to keep from losing points on the pest control portion of your audit. Meet quarterly with your pest management professional to discuss your IPM program, as well as any facility updates (e.g. adjustments to employee entrances, changes in suppliers, etc.) that may affect your current pest control efforts.
While pest control is an ongoing effort, it’s important to take some extra time the week before scheduled audits to thoroughly review your pest control program with your pest management professional. Look at your facility through the eyes of an auditor to make sure that you haven’t missed anything, and make immediate plans to correct any issues you might encounter. You’ll also want to meet with your pest management professional to discuss any changes your auditor may have made to their pest management requirements.
With a multitude of third-party auditors—each with different requirements—it can be confusing to keep up. For that reason, the National Pest Management Association (NPMA) compiled a universal set of pest management standards for audited facilities. Drafted by a group of nationally recognized professionals representing most of the major food safety auditors—including AIB International, ASI, NSF-Cook & Thurber, Silliker and YUM Brands – the NPMA’s guidelines meet or exceed the pest management requirements of all the major auditors.
The universal standards cover four major categories of the typical pest management program in a food plant. The first category is personnel, and covers background checks, uniform and vehicle requirements, minimum training standards and so forth. This category has implications not only for food safety but also food security.
Next are the pest management protocols themselves, which naturally form the core of the standards. The final two categories are communications and recordkeeping. As outlined above, this written information plays a fundamental role at audit time, as it is the only way auditors have to critically evaluate pest management activity and performance over time.
You can find NPMA’s complete “Pest Management Standards for Food Plants” document online at NPMAPestWorld.com under “Technical Support.”
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