EN16636 – does your pest control company measure up?

If you want to see whether your company measures up against the new European Standard EN16636, you can get a copy of the standard from a National Standards body such as the British Standards Institute. BSI charge £174 a copy. For a pdf. Ouch.

We have found the same document available for just EU14.69 (about a tenner) on the Estonian Standards body website www.evs.ee/shop – and you get a free translation in Estonian too!

For companies who want some help to meet the standard (including copies of all documentation required, a pre-audit assessment, guidance on what auditors will be looking for, coaching on how to be audited and pass, etc etc.), BPCA can provide this (no charge for members). Also, from January 2016 all paid-up BPCA Members will have a free audit by a global certification body (Bureau Veritas) against the EN16636 standard – we’ve saved up ready for this and can offer it at no charge to members.

Why do it? Pierre Choraine, the Head of Sector Biocides for DG Health & Food Safety in the European Commission (the man who decides who can buy and use biocides across Europe) said back in March 2015 “…if CEPA Certified can achieve critical mass whereby the Commission can be sure that there are sufficient numbers of pest professionals across Europe to ensure the ongoing protection of public health and assets from pests, we would be minded to add wording to active substance authorisations along the lines of ‘to be used only by CEPA Certified Professionals’…”

So there you have it. European licencing is around the corner, and BPCA members will be ready for it. Even better, it’s included in the cost of BPCA membership. Just like the technician audit that may be required to meet rodenticide stewardship/legislation that one speaker mentioned at the Pest Control News seminar earlier this month. The same speaker talked about significant additional costs, but that won’t apply to BPCA – Members have already paid for this, so they are covered.

‘Coffee and a chat’ is also free.

How big is the pest control workforce?

The Royal Society for Public Health has carried out research which gave a figure of 15 million for the number of UK workers involved in the public health agenda. This clearly includes not just Environmental Health Officers (EHO).

On the pest control front, the SIC codes (used to define categories for the UK workforce) puts the number of pest control operatives at 8,080, with over 6,000 of these in England. The expression ‘lies, damnded lies and statistics’ always springs to mind when looking at industry metrics, but there’s a wider point on which we definitely agree. Without the support and active involvement of a wider workforce, no pest control management strategy can be effective. Whether it’s the night security guard spotting rats moving around in the car park, the cleaners noticing smear marks under a door sill, or a janitor finding his mop has been chewed, the wider workfoce has a role to play in monitoring for pest acrivity. And it’s not just in the sensing of problems. In a kitchen environemnt, the most successful pest control strategy is to clean up (and under) everything. That’s not the job of your friendly local pest expert – it’s for the staff to change their culture so every shift they are maintainin an environment that isn’t attractive to pests – if they can do this, their pest control costs are likely to go down, and a visit from the EHO becomes a slim possibility.

So when you’re making an angry call to your pest contractor regarding the sighting of a mouse infestation on your premises, to paraphrase JFK “ask not what your pest controller can do for you, but ask what you can do for your pest controller”

To read the RSPH research which inspired this article visit www.cfwi.org.uk/