Sep 10, 2012 – A Threshold Level of ONE?
QUESTION:
In your last article you said "Be liberal with a use of insect glue traps, placed in many locations so you can monitor to see where hot spots may exist." When servicing restaurants we would love to place glue boards out and the health dept encourages this, BUT if they see 1 live one in the traps they can shut the restaurant down! I call this entrapment! What are your thoughts?
ANSWER:
Well, my characterization of this, if it truly does happen, would be to call that action rather short sighted or narrow minded, or perhaps a bit ignorant of good pest management practices. If, and I qualify it with "if", a health official were to shut down a restaurant because a single, or even a few, roaches were found in properly placed monitoring devices the end result would be pretty obvious. They would be stifling the use of these monitoring devices that are important for determining if and when pests enter these kinds of places. Non-toxic insect glue traps are an important part of an overall IPM program for good roach management.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
In your last article you said "Be liberal with a use of insect glue traps, placed in many locations so you can monitor to see where hot spots may exist." When servicing restaurants we would love to place glue boards out and the health dept encourages this, BUT if they see 1 live one in the traps they can shut the restaurant down! I call this entrapment! What are your thoughts?
ANSWER:
Well, my characterization of this, if it truly does happen, would be to call that action rather short sighted or narrow minded, or perhaps a bit ignorant of good pest management practices. If, and I qualify it with "if", a health official were to shut down a restaurant because a single, or even a few, roaches were found in properly placed monitoring devices the end result would be pretty obvious. They would be stifling the use of these monitoring devices that are important for determining if and when pests enter these kinds of places. Non-toxic insect glue traps are an important part of an overall IPM program for good roach management.
Hopefully there is just some misunderstanding here that can be cleared up with some discussions with the health department itself. Maybe it was a single over-exuberant health inspector who did this or maybe even just claimed that he had the authority to do so, but I would hope this was not the policy of any local health department. Perhaps a meeting with the upper management of your local health department would be beneficial for everyone involved.
View past Ask Mr. Pest Control questions.
