Vertebrate Pests

Peanuts, Pests and Proactiveness

Well, certainly one of the most informative and elucidating events for the pest management industry the past six months has been the salmonellosis outbreak traced back to peanut-related products. Perhaps just this past February you read headlines like this: "Dead Rodents Found in Peanut Plant."

Texas health officials shuttered a peanut plant at the center of a national Salmonella outbreak and ordered it to recall all products ever shipped from the plant after inspectors found dead rodents, rodent feces and feathers in a ceiling crawlspace above a production area. Officials also found that an air-handling system was pulling debris from the crawlspace into areas where dry-roasted peanuts, peanut meal and granulated peanuts were processed. Preliminary tests by a private lab indicated Salmonella was present.

This Texas plant has now become the focal point of a national outbreak of salmonellosis from October of 2008 until last month (when this article went to press). Thus far, 600 people in 43 states have been sickened and nine deaths linked to this outbreak. Experts predict that additional cases will have occurred by the time you have read this article. Overall, more than 1,900 products have been recalled. The Peanut Corporation of America has filed for bankruptcy protection and is now also under an FBI investigation. Interestingly, this particular outbreak is not associated with peanut butter. But you may recall it has been only two years since a Salmonella outbreak involving 625 people in 47 states caused ConAgra to recall its Peter Pan brand peanut butter.

Let’s examine how this Salmonella outbreak ties into rodents and to the rodent control services we must always offer to commercial food-handling establishments.

Salmonellosis. The Salmonella group of bacteria are common in urban environments, with about 2,000 different strains (serotypes) having been identified. Only some of the Salmonella are pathogenic to people and cause one type of food poisoning called salmonellosis (other types of bacteria and viruses cause other types of food poisoning).

Two serotypes of pathogenic Salmonella in particular are associated with rodents and other pest species (e.g., cockroaches, birds, flies, etc.): Salmonella typhimurium and S. enteritidis. These serotypes are also the strains most commonly associated with salmonellosis. And, in fact, the current outbreak has been genetically fingerprinted by the CDC as the S. typhimurium type.

Salmonellosis occurs when people and animals consume water or food contaminated with the bacteria or with feces from infected persons or animals. The symptoms of salmonellosis include fevers, gastroenteritis, abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and dehydration. Every year, about 40,000 cases of salmonellosis are reported in the Unites States alone. However, many milder cases are not diagnosed or reported, and thus, some experts put the actual number of annual infections each to be upward of nearly 2 million. As has occurred in this peanut product-related outbreak, death may occur in severe cases, particularly among children and the elderly.

Salmonella and rodents. The percentage of salmonellosis cases in which rodents may be involved in transmission generally is unknown. However, the commensal species of rodents are not considered to be of high significance in salmonellosis. Nevertheless, should rodents be active in areas where Salmonella bacteria are present (e.g., contaminated fields, contaminated roofs and structural voids, drainage ditches, sewers, etc.), the potential for rodents to serve as transfer vehicles of dangerous microbes via their bodies or their excrement is significant. Consequently, mice and rats are considered health pests in urban environments. Both rats and mice deposit several hundred feces in the areas they frequent in the course of just a week or two.

Presently, it is not known what role, if any, rodents and/or birds played in this Salmonella outbreak. Imminent and future investigations by a host of federal and state agencies, epidemiologists and food safety specialists will no doubt clarify the issue. But two things in this outbreak case provide valuable lessons to pest management professionals everywhere: 1) the rodents and feathers were discovered in a ceiling crawlspace above a production area at the plant, and 2) the plant had not been inspected for nearly four years.

Food Safety = Proactiveness. In the context of professional pest management services, being proactive means controlling a situation by anticipating events, not reacting to unfortunate events when they finally happen.Ceilings and other hard-to-reach structural voids in buildings — especially commercial buildings and in food-handling establishments — are especially vulnerable to pest invasions. Pests gravitate into these voids because they are dark and thus provide concealment from their predators; they tend to be hard-to-reach and they are often warm, which is important to small mammals. (For more on the issue of ceilings and pests, see "Vertebrate Pests: Ceiling Voids And Pest Issues," PCT, April 2002.)

Therefore, it makes little sense to inspect and service ceiling spaces and other such voids only after (i.e., being reactive) the client discovers a problem, or when something becomes contaminated, or when a regulatory inspector performs the inspection and is the one to discover filth and/or pest issues that should have been discovered and documented earlier by a servicing pest contractor.

Moreover, being proactive on this aspect of pest management is actually an integral part of both the science and the service components of pest management. For food-related clients, pro-active inspections are not a value-added service nor are they overkill. Proactive inspections must be built into the front end of the partnership between a client and the pest management professional during the bid sale. Then proactiveness must be implemented by the professional that actually performs the service. The truth of the matter is that food safety requires a servicing pest professional to be more of an investigator than an applicator (of pesticides). Finally, proactive inspections must be subject to quality control checks by both parties.

For prospective customers who don’t want to pay the 25 percent extra (or whatever the costs) for proactive inspections that goes beyond a "follow the walls" type of service — you need to walk away. If something "goes down" at a later time, the pest management professional has essentially no defense. Pest management services as part of a total food safety program contain several essential assumptions. Proactive inspections into out-of-the-way areas where pests tend to hide are one of the most elementary assumptions.

Summary. The consequences of not having a periodic pest inspection, not proactively pricing, and servicing the more out-of-the-way structural voids of a food-handling establishment are easy to predict. Sooner or later, whether it’s a peanut plant, a restaurant or a school kitchen, pest issues are likely to arise and, as in this outbreak, occasionally produce unfortunate consequences. To ensure food safety, the client does not have the option of buying anything less than a proactive service. Nor does a pest management provider have the option of not selling one.

And on that final note: It is worth restating for emphasis that the authorities reported the peanut plant associated with this outbreak has not received any inspections since 2005. How unfortunate.

The author is president of RMC Consulting, Richmond, Ind., and can be reached via e-mail at rcorrigan@giemedia.com.