The BRCGS for Food Safety is a leading global food safety standard followed by food and allied businesses in more than one hundred countries.
Numerous Indian food and packaging exporters have adopted these standards to qualify as exporters to foreign customers who require their vendors to comply with the BRCGS for Food Safety.
BRCGS FS Section 4.14’s emphasis on pest prevention: In the BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9, section 4.14 covers pest management, with the key statement of the clause below clearly emphasising pest prevention.
“The whole site shall have an effective preventive pest management programme in place to minimise the risk of pest presence, and resources shall be available to respond rapidly to any issues which occur to prevent risk to products. Pest management programmes shall comply with all applicable legislation.”
The above statement emphasises pest prevention and the need to minimise pest risk by relying primarily on pest proofing, habitat modification, and other approaches. Food companies and their pest management service providers should have records to prove how the pest management programme for a facility can demonstrate the use of preventive approaches.
The use of building design that makes it inhospitable for pest occurrence and harborage, screens and door closers to prevent insect entry, air curtains, strip curtains, double doors, avoidance of weeds, trash and debris on the exteriors, lighting placement and lighting type to avoid insect attraction, and preventing water puddles are simple pest prevention steps that can be demonstrated to a BRCGS Food Safety Auditor.
BRCGS FS Sub-section 4.14.9 refers to pest proofing: While sub-clauses 4.14.1 to 4.14.12 list the different requirements for the preventive pest management programmes, sub-clause 4.14.9 specifically refers to maintaining records of pest-proofing.
“4.14.9 Records of pest management inspections, pest proofing and hygiene recommendations and actions taken shall be maintained. It shall be the site’s responsibility to ensure that all of the relevant recommendations made by its contractor or in-house expert are carried out in a timely manner.”
Though the BRCGS FS clearly states that the auditee must maintain the records of pest proofing, most food businesses and pest management services providers are unaware of such a requirement.
BRCGS FS auditees can maintain pictures before and after pest-proofing and a list of pest-proofing fixtures installed by date and location to prove using a pest-preventive approach at their site.
Pest prevention guidance from the BRC Best Practice Guide – Pest Control: To help our blog post readers, we researched how food and other businesses following the BRCGS Food Safety can ensure that they fully comply with the standard’s pest management clause.
We referred to the British Retail Consortium (BRC) “Best Practice Guideline – Pest Control” published in July 2008.
Though the guideline is older than the latest BRCGS FS published in August 2022, we consider the BRC Best Practice Guideline – Pest Control a very useful document to understand the importance of pest prevention in preparing for a BRCGS Food Safety audit.
Summary of the pest prevention guidelines from the BRC Best Practice Guideline – Pest Control: In this document, the phrase pest prevention occurs nine times, and we have listed each such instance and elaborated on its context and meaning for the benefit of BRCGS FS auditees and their pest management service providers.
Section 2: Under the section, The Importance of Pest Control and Management, the guideline mentions how many countries require pest prevention and pest management programmes. If an auditee’s country’s government has pest prevention in legislation, then such an auditee’s site must comply with relevant law and the BRCGS FS requirements of pest prevention.
Section 7.0: The Pest Control Contract
Section 7.1: Under the sub-section, Visit Frequency, the guideline emphasises the key responsibility of the pest control service provider is pest prevention! BRCGS FS auditees and pest management service providers may have rarely thought about pest control, having to focus on pest prevention primarily. However, the standard requires a service provider to have primary responsibility for pest prevention.
Section 7.3: Under the sub-section, Partnership, the guideline specifies that the service provider must provide clear, easy-to-understand advice on pest prevention measures. Pest management service providers provide their recommendations to their customers and must highlight items that can be classified as pest prevention in their suggestions. Common recommendations such as the need to plug holes in walls or gaps below doors or shutters, repair screens, or cover vent holes with screens are good examples of pest prevention that a pest management service provider can give to their BRCGS FS auditee customer.
Section 8.0: Under Proofing, the guideline emphasises the first principle of pest control, which is pest prevention or keeping pests out of the external areas of a facility and, more specifically, from production and storage areas. This section lays out the basis for a pest management programme, which is to be built on the foundation of preventing pests from a facility so the food produced there has lesser pest risks.
12.0 Pest Control Inspections
Section 12.4: Under Internal Inspections, the guideline asks the food company to highlight pest-proofing issues in their routine hygiene audits. It also asks for the audit findings and reports to be shared with the service provider, implying that the two parties must collaborate on pest proofing and prevention.
Appendix 3: In the sample document titled Principles for Completing a Visit Report, the guideline mentions that the pest control technician must advise the food company’s staff on pest prevention.
Glossary: The glossary discusses pest prevention and proofing when describing pest management service providers.
Contractor: While defining a pest control contractor, the guideline describes them as a company reducing pest risk through proactive pest prevention and management.
Proofing: The physical prevention of pests to exclude them externally or from high-risk internal
locations. Pest proofing can include eliminating gaps under doors, around pipes, and gaps in brickwork/airbricks.
Service provider: Internal or external person or group of persons responsible for pest prevention and management. The guideline thus is clear that whether an internal or external service provider is used, the BRCGS FS auditee must ensure that the service provider is responsible for pest prevention apart from pest management.
How can Giridhar Pai Associates (GPA) help you in your BRCGS FS audit? As a leading distributor of international innovative pest management products in India, GPA has the best pest prevention and monitoring products. GPA markets FLYght Duo UV LED Insect Light Traps, Storgard Insect Monitoring Systems and Ecomone Pheromone Traps and Lures for monitoring pests at food facilities. Further, GPA also markets the RodeXit All-In-One rodent seal for rodent prevention from gaps below doors and shutters in food factories and warehouses. Numerous Indian food companies have already used GPA-marketed products to enhance food safety compliance at their factories and comply with global food safety standards like the BRC Global Standard of Food Safety.
If you have any questions on how you can use our products for your or your customer’s food safety program, contact us.
