Commercial Kitchens – Maintaining a clean (and pest-free) food processing area

Commercial kitchens are at risk of getting dirty and unkempt – you need to ensure your commercial kitchen is clean and pest-free!

It’s far too easy to come across food hygiene blunders in the UK, from foreign spiders appearing in packaged food to cockroaches invading your local takeaway. As much as there are laws and regulations to stop these kinds of things from happening, it’s not always the case.

Thankfully, the UK has the Food Standards Agency (FSA) who keep their eye on all the legislation involved with food and who’s breaching this. The problem though can be down to keeping food preparation areas clean and how this can be done effectively.

Remove the Waste

It may seem self-explanatory to remove waste but there are surprising number of restaurants and takeaways that fail to adequately remove waste from their premises.

The FSA recommends that all waste that is produced from commercial kitchens and other food preparation areas is removed at the earliest possibility. This is to prevent any rodents or insects getting attracted to the smell of the waste in the kitchen. Rats and flies are particularly drawn to the smell of food waste and will make every attempt to follow the smell.

Washing and Cleaning

Although standard practice in many restaurants and food preparation establishments, cleaning work surfaces and cooking equipment is vital to maintaining a pest-free status in your establishment.

Leaving crumbs or spilt food over work surfaces and cooking equipment can significantly increase the chances of having an infestation of unwanted pests in your food preparation areas. The FSA recommends that you clean work surfaces at the end of every day and carry out a significant clean of all equipment each week.

What happens if I don’t clean?

Apart from potentially breaching FSA guidelines for maintaining a hygienic food preparation area, there are serious consequences for not keeping it clean. Rats are rodents notorious for hunting out food waste, not only are they notorious scavengers, they are often carriers for disease.

Many diseases carried by the rodents can be harmful to humans causing severe illness. Rodents are also known for getting food by any means and could cause damage to the building as well as any equipment in the food prep area. This includes chewing through rubber, wood and other materials to reach food.

How can I prevent pests?

Whilst cleaning and washing are sometimes good enough to prevent pests, sometimes they are not the only things that you can do to prevent pests getting into the establishment. Here at Confirm A Kill we offer discreet electronic fly killers which can remove any fly problems.

A lot of commercial kitchens deploy traps for rodents. Whilst this can be an effective method of pest control, you need to ensure these are checked regularly as to not encourage the spread of disease.

If you aren’t sure what pest control tactics you need to use or if you feel like you may have got a pest infestation, Confirm A Kill offers commercial pest control agreements and inspections to help you maintain your pest-free status for you.