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Changing Rules in The Middle of The Game – Rodenticides
Remember when you were young, and the many hours spent playing games with friends. Sometimes, during a game, someone would demand the rules change because they felt they were losing. Maybe you thought, “Hey! That’s not fair.” But rather than stinging tears of indignation, physical vengeance, or stomping away with audible distain, you chose to continue in the new reality for the sake of fun. While food safety is not a game, in our industry, sudden rule changes can often feel like playing a game with shifting boundaries. Some rule changes can have significant impact on our systems and processes. When this happens, we are faced with difficult choices on how to handle the changes and proceed with a winning solution. We may be tasked with developing a rapid response plan in the ‘middle of the game’. A good example of this type of a challenge can be found with recent and ongoing rule changes around rodenticides, rodent equipment and rodent management programs.
Just for context, let’s review a couple of important points around the rodent program at your facility. Preventing the invasion and establishment of rodents in our facilities requires a layered approach. We protect from the outside in using rodenticides and a variety of rodent equipment types including baits stations on the exterior, multi-catch stations near doors and other traps and monitors on the interior. This approach helps us to stop rodents from getting in and provides an early warning system. Over the years we have adopted standard practices, generally accepted sets of rodent management rules, to succeed in the ongoing goal of food safety and protection from this pest. Recently these standard practices have been challenged by ‘voices with good intention’ asking for rule changes to better protect humans from toxins, reduce secondary poisoning in animals, and address animal welfare concerns. Whether you agree or disagree with these voices, they do drive rule changes and noticeable disruptions of the status quo.
The rodenticide regulatory environment has become a shifting landscape of new rules and restrictions. Rule change can come from many directions:
- National or Federal Level: Ongoing registration reviews of rodenticides at the national level of the country you reside, can result in significant changes to rodenticide label language and restrictions.
- Local Level: State, providence, district or even community level restrictions are present in many places. These add complexity to the regulatory landscape and can change suddenly, without much warning.
- Company Level: Sustainability initiatives and brand-specific policies within our own organizations can drive change.
- Global Level: Patterns of product and equipment restrictions throughout the world can impact current and future directions in the country in which you live.
As we face these mandatory rule changes, we ask ourselves, “How can we respond to these changes without compromising food safety?” Sometimes it can feel like we are being forced to a new reality without clear direction or new alternatives to choose from. Tears and indignant stomping probably will not get us to a better place in the serious game of rodent management. So how do we adjust and prevail with a new set of rules? A back-to-basic approach is often the best course of action when the rules change around us. Tried and true, rodent prevention approaches such as reducing food, water and harborage near the structure, maintaining good door seals, keeping doors closed, and inspecting incoming goods are still highly effective. In fact, being forced to fall back on these old-school tactics may be a better strategy for us in the long run.
While it may be painful having the rules change in the middle of our efforts, maybe this pain can help us find better long-term strategies. So, take a deep breath, lean towards the basics, get back out there on the playground, and join in the fun. I’ll be out there with you, together winning the game.
Whether you’re running a restaurant, retail space, warehouse or other commercial facility, Ecolab can help by using proven science to keep your business pest-free.
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