Top 3 Pest Control Food Safety Audit Failures That You Passed
Just because you passed your GFSI scheme audit does not mean that your pest control program is doing a good job. We see many food processing facilities who get passing, or even good scores on the pest management portion of their audit when many glaring non-conformities and deficiencies are present. Here are some of the top oversights we find:
Missing or inadequate Risk Assessment
This is a matter of showing your work and setting up a defense of your decisions in designing the pest management program. If you have not performed and documented a risk assessment, then the foundation of your pest management program does not exist. Often, programs are designed based on what the pest management contractor has been successful with in the past, what their procedures dictate, or what habit has deemed easiest. None of this satisfies the mandate to perform a risk asessment.
No Annual Review
Similar to the risk assessment, annual reviews are often cursory at best. In many instances, signing the device location map once per year is all that occurs to show that any attention was paid to an annual review. The intention of this requirement of almost every GSFI based audit scheme is to force the program to be evaluated and adjusted according to the dynamic conditions of the facility. If a new line was added, equipment removed, and expansion happened, renovations occurred,etc. then the program needs to be adjusted and documented as such.
Missing or insufficient trend analysis
his is a particularly sore spot. To be clear, there is a difference between trend reporting and trend analysis. The self-serve data portal that can show you a graph of how many instances of an occurrence took place over any specified time frame is trend reporting…NOT trend analysis. What the spirit of this requirement intends is that someone with knowledge of the site and of pest biology review the collected data, verify the information and then draw conclusions about it that direct action and adaptation of the program.
What This Means for Your Pest Control Program
This means that your pest management program, while passing audits, may not be performing in the spirit of your GSFI audit scheme intended.
This opens the door to risk. If a particularly keen auditor shows up one day, you may find yourself facing hard questions that you and your pest management provider have a hard time answering.
Moving Forward
Too often, facilities mistake documentation volume or passing scores for true program performance. A compliant program should be built on documented risk assessment, continuously evaluated through meaningful annual review, and actively adapted through real trend analysis.
