Delivering Effective Pest Control with Live Cockroach Traps
To help keep your food production quality standards high, you must monitor and control crawling insects. One proven method involves the use of live cockroach traps.
In the food processing industry, it’s compulsory to track, manage and eliminate crawling insects - such as cockroaches - within warehouses, processing plants and other environments. These creatures carry and transfer a range of bacteria and spread several diseases.
While monitoring and controlling roaches will help protect the quality and safety of your products, pest management can be difficult. Also, you may be restricted on your use of certain pesticides.
If these issues apply to you, then you’ll be pleased to know there’s another effective pest control solution available.
Setting the traps
For several years, the Benelux countries have experienced excellent results with the use of live traps for the German cockroach (Blattella germanica L).
Cockroaches usually prefer to hide in dark, warm cracks and crevices, often near to the food source. They have a rapid life cycle, which ensures that infestations can reach huge populations in a short time.
To counter this, it’s possible to deploy live traps and find out where the roaches are hiding. Each trap is a segmented funnel that has a special bait to attract the insects, and a sticky layer to trap them.
Trained technicians will use their expertise and a comprehensive grid system to place the traps throughout a warehouse or other building. The full coverage includes locations where nobody has seen any roaches, and where you wouldn’t normally expect them to hide (e.g. areas with a low temperature and no food).
Monitoring the live traps
The skilled technicians will return to the site on several occasions to check the live traps and report on the number of trapped insects found, their life stage (either nymph or adult) and location.
The orientation of the trapped insects gives the technician an indication of where the cockroaches are hiding or foraging, allowing for the placement of additional traps. An intense follow-up leads to the discovery of one or more ‘hot spots’ where the insects are living.
The next step is to implement the appropriate action(s) in these places, to prevent further breeding and destroy the population.
This activity may include infrastructural work, such as filling the small cracks and crevices identified during the monitoring phase. Other measures that eradicate the conditions favoured by the insects - such as food waste on the floor - are also likely.
When it’s time to apply an insecticide, the intense monitoring of the live traps associated with this solution helps to reduce the quantity used.
Safer food, fewer risks
The food processing industry needs pest management measures, and SGS has the experience and expertise to deploy live cockroach traps and implement other pest control strategies.
The SGS solution can help guarantee food safety while also contributing to a reduction in certain risks. These include the risks associated with losing accreditations and certifications, and those relating to the reputational damage that could arise from an infestation or related health scare.
For further information, please contact:
Fumigation and Pest Control Manager
SGS Belgium NV
t: +32 3570 97 95
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