Pests can cause damage in food processing environments by contaminating foods with biological/physical material and disrupting the environment. They can also impact human health.
Use preventive controls such as keeping indoor trash bins sealed and removing outdoor compost. Consider using biological control methods such as releasing natural predators or parasitic nematodes, to reduce populations of harmful organisms. Contact St Charles Pest Control now!
The best way to deal with pests is to prevent them from entering a property in the first place. Of course, there are times when the use of pesticides is necessary to control an existing infestation, but these chemicals should always be used sparingly as they can be harmful to pets and humans if they are mishandled. Preventive measures include using screens and doors, keeping garbage cans tightly covered, removing food from the house regularly, not leaving out pet food or water and fixing leaky pipes. It also means staying on top of cleaning and maintenance, not allowing woodpiles to build up against a structure and keeping the lawn mowed.
In the indoor environment, preventing pests is even more important because they can carry diseases and ruin clothing, food products and other items. They can also cause allergic reactions, stings and other irritations in people (like bees, wasps, hornets, ants, fleas and spiders) or stain or damage surfaces and structures, like mold and mildew.
Some natural forces affect the growth of all organisms, including pest populations. Climate, natural enemies, barriers, availability of food and shelter can all influence how large a population grows and how quickly it spreads. Understanding these factors allows you to predict how fast and how easily a pest population will grow.
Knowing more about a particular pest’s life cycle helps you take better precautions to prevent them. For example, most insects lay eggs in a specific area before moving on to another location to mature and reproduce. Knowing when these eggs hatch helps you put preventive measures in place.
A reputable pest management company will be able to help you develop a pest prevention plan for your home or business. These plans are tailored to your needs and budget and can involve a wide range of controls. In general, they include regular inspections and monitoring to identify problems and prevent them before they become infestations. Some of these controls may be as simple as installing screens on windows, sealing cracks or putting out traps. They can also involve altering the environment by heating or cooling, changing humidity, removing food sources or putting out physical barriers.
Suppression
The goal of pest control is to reduce the population to below the level that will cause unacceptable damage. There is a wide range of tactics to achieve this goal including biological control, physical control and chemical controls. The most cost effective strategy is often a combination of methods. In general, the most efficient pest control strategy is the one that requires the least labor cash input for a given level of yield increase, with all other factors being held constant.
Many natural enemies such as parasites, predators, pathogens, and nematodes can control insect populations by consuming them or interrupting their life cycles. A variety of environmental factors can also influence pests, such as temperature, humidity, water availability and food sources.
Using proper sanitation practices can prevent or suppress many pests by eliminating their food, shelter and/or water sources. This is especially important in urban and industrial settings where pests can find more shelter and food sources than in agricultural areas. Sanitation techniques can include hygienic seed handling, frequent garbage pickup, clean food-handling facilities and cleaning equipment between uses. Proper sanitation can also reduce the carryover of pests between fields or food-handling sites.
Some pests are more difficult to control. For example, the weed species Eragrostis tetraploida can reproduce very quickly and may require multiple herbicide applications to suppress it. Eragrostis is often a serious problem in cotton, wheat and peanut fields. It is also common in sweet corn fields. It can cause substantial damage and is a significant competitor for land. Its tolerance to several herbicides is low. It is also resistant to certain insecticidal treatments and can be carried over from one crop to the next by contaminated clothing or equipment.
An understanding of the life cycle of a pest can help determine when control action is necessary. For example, some insects are migratory and only need to be controlled once or twice per year. The life cycle of a pest can also provide clues as to when it is at its most vulnerable stage, which can influence the timing and frequency of controls.
Eradication
Eradication is the complete removal of a pest, and can involve a wide range of control measures including biological, cultural, physical, chemical and sanitary means. It is a more long-term approach than suppression or exclusion and relies on natural enemies (predation, parasitism, herbivory) supplemented by a human management role. Classically, the enemy organisms are bred in the laboratory and released into the environment either in small, repeated batches or in a single large-scale release. Ideally, the organisms will breed and multiply and provide long-term control.
Often, eradication is part of an integrated pest management program that includes cultivation practices that discourage insect infestation, crop varieties with built-in resistance to insects or diseases and monitoring of pest invasions so that pesticides can be used when they will do the most good. Depending on the situation, eradication may also be possible with a combination of techniques, for example, spraying only when a pest threatens to cause economic damage and using early warning systems that monitor weather data around the clock for outbreaks.
The benefit of eradication is that it removes the disease vector and eliminates future infections and vaccination costs. These benefits are compared with the cost of the eradication campaign and, if they exceed the costs, a decision is made to proceed. However, a number of factors can lead to the failure of an eradication campaign. They can include the inability to discover a nonhuman host, or a vaccine strain that is not effective against the new target population (both a problem for yellow fever) or unforeseen reservoirs that are unrecognized and a barrier to progress in eradication campaigns for guinea worm, poliomyelitis and rabies.
Research has shown that successful eradication of pests is more likely to occur in man-made habitats than in (semi)natural ones. It is also more likely to be successful at local than international scales. This may reflect that it is easier to monitor a small infestation, and the need for international coordination between countries can limit success. It has also been found that the likelihood of a successful eradication depends on the spatial extent of the infested area at the start of the campaign, with campaigns in Australasia being more likely to be successful than those in other world areas.
Biological Control
Biological control is the use of living organisms, such as predators, parasitoids, diseases and pathogens, to manage pest populations without synthetic chemicals. These organisms are often referred to as “natural enemies” because their purpose in nature is to keep pest populations low. Unlike chemical pesticides, biological control agents are designed to attack only the target species. This minimizes disruptions to ecosystem balance and reduces the potential for developing resistant pests.
In classical biological control, an introduced natural enemy is released in large numbers to rapidly overwhelm the target pest. The goal is to bring the pest population below damaging or intolerable levels. For example, when the cottony cushion scale was a serious problem in citrus, predatory insects and a parasitoid fly were introduced from Australia and within a few years pest density was reduced to an acceptable level. Similarly, damage from the alfalfa weevil was brought to an acceptable level when the vedalia beetle and parasitoid fly were introduced.
This approach is usually most effective against exotic or introduced pests and less successful against native ones. It requires a great deal of effort in collecting, importing and rearing the natural enemy prior to its release. Also, synchrony between the life cycle of the natural enemy and the host pest is critical to success.
While some of these organisms can feed on or parasitize many different pest species, others are highly specific. The parasitoid nematode, Encarsia formosa, is used in greenhouse production to control whitefly; the parasitic mite, Phytoseiulus persimilis, controls two-spotted spider mite. These specificities limit the number of cropping systems that can be treated with this method.
A third approach to biological control is called augmentative biocontrol. In this case, the natural enemies or pathogens are already present in the cropping system but may not be abundant enough to control the target pest. Therefore, the crop is periodically treated with one or more of these organisms to increase their numbers. This can be done in a variety of ways such as spraying the plants, depositing the organisms into the soil or even placing them in protective enclosures.
