Restaurant pests can make your guests ill, tarnishing the image of your restaurant image forever. This is why, whether you are running a five-star restaurant or a cafe, you have to maintain the sanitation standards to thwart the pests’ growth and property damages.
In this article, we’ve put together a mini-guide that highlights pests’ potential hazards to those in the food business, type of food pests, and how they contaminate the food.
Why Are Pests a Food Safety Hazard?
When pests have access to food supplies, it is a no-brainer to understand how dangerous they are for businesses in the catering and food retail sector. Pests can burrow into food and contaminate it, making the food inedible for safe consumption.
The pests can spread several infection diseases —dengue, malaria, asthma, yellow, and more— through their droppings, urine, fur, feet, and salvia — as they carry harmful bacteria like E. coli. Salmonella, etc.
Those who have food contaminated by pests may suffer from food poisoning and/or any other similar illness. If your restaurant is infested by pests, don’t put your customer’s health and reputation at stake; consider professional pest control services in Sydney.
Types of Food Pests
There are a host of pests that can sneak their way into your food supplies. They can be categorized into four broad types: first, rats, second mice, and the other two are insects & birds, respectively. Such pests can include insects like mites, flies, ants, cockroaches, and birds such as starlings, pigeons, or sparrows.
Each of these pests can cause significant damage in their way.
These pests can be anywhere where there is food readily available —stored or fresh — and places they can build a shelter, such as your restaurant kitchen.
How Pests Contaminate Food?
The insects —such as moths, mites, weevils or beetles— those who reside on packed food create holes to get inside. Although they are very small in size, they can contaminate large quantities of packed food. The common signs of contaminated food packages include beams, window sills, and webbing around food spillages.
Ants are another big nuisance; they have the uncanny ability to infest food areas such as shelves and cupboards and make their way to packed food and can ruin it. They can nest in the cracks in the building wall, under sheets of papers, and so on.
Cockroaches aren’t picky for food; they generally pop-up out of holes when the lights are turned off, therefore hard to spot. They could be spreading diseases without any knowing it. You can suspect their presence seeing skin casts, egg cases, and droppings.
Rats and mice not only cause health hazards but can also make their way into your building fixtures and cause considerable damage to the inside of the building, posing a big threat.
Conclusion
At Envirocare, we’ve trained professionals with a wealth of experience and vast knowledge to deal with all kinds of pests. We adhere to safe and eco-friendly methods to eliminate pests. We will assist you with inspection, treatment plans, and ongoing preventative services.
If you’ve any query, call us at 1800 600 760 or email us at emvirocare1@bgpond.com