Food safety is important, it doesn’t matter whether you’re preparing food at home or in a top restaurant. If you get it wrong you can give your loved ones and hundreds of other’s food poisoning, or worse.
But, in all the rush to ensure food health and safety hygiene standards are conformed with, it’s easy to forget just how dangerous insects and other pests can be.
Flies, rodents, and virtually any pest you can think of carry a variety of diseases, some of them will make you ill, others can be fatal. That’s why you need to find out more about your local pest control experts and the threat to food hygiene that these pests can be.
For example, a fly doesn’t eat solid food. The moment it lands on a surface it uses the feelers on its feet to check if the substance is edible. If it is, the fly will spit acid onto a section of the food, this will dissolve, allowing the fly to suck it up as a liquid.
If it’s not bad enough that the fly is spitting on your food, thanks to its liquid diet it is also leaving waste deposits on your food! Diseases are carried in its blood and on the bottom of its feet, both of which are in contact with your food.
That’s why you shouldn’t keep any food that a fly has landed on. This even applies if the pest has landed on your countertop, they’ll still be leaving the same contaminants behind for when you do prepare food.
If you think you have a pest issue you need to contact the exterminators quickly! The following 5 methods can help to keep your food safety standards high:
1. Cleaning Up
The most important thing to do is to clean every surface after you’ve finished preparing food. You should use a disinfectant spray to ensure the surface is clean and don’t forget to vacuum and mop the floor regularly. Pests won’t be attracted to a building that has no obvious food.
2. Storing Food
Continuing the same trend you need to ensure that all food is put back in a cupboard or refrigerator and that it is stored inside a plastic container, or something similar that the pests can’t get into.
Again, this will give the pests nothing to aim for, there will be much easier buildings to target.
3. Tying Waste
When you’ve finished with food rep you’ll have food waste. You may even have food waste after eating that can’t be saved for another day. It’s important to put this straight into the garbage disposal or into a bin with a lid. This will stop pests from being able to get to it.
Again, you’re making your home less attractive to pests, which reduces the issues with pests and food hygiene.
4. Removing Waste
When you need to remove the waste pull the entire bag out of the bin and tie it immediately. You can then take it outside where it should really be placed into another bin, keeping it away from all other pests and rodents.
The more inviting you make your home the more likely it is you’ll have a pest issue and that will affect your food hygiene.
5. Add an Electronic Catcher
Finally, you have to assume that the odd pest will get into your building. Flies are one of the worst culprits but can be easily dealt with if you add an electronic catcher on your wall. It will attract the flies and other airborne pests, then electrocute them.