What does the Code actually say?
Standard 3.2.2 of the Food Standards Code, at clause 24, requires a food business to take all practicable measures to prevent pests entering the premises, and to eradicate and prevent the harbourage of pests on the premises and in vehicles used to transport food.
Read that carefully, because it sets an outcome, not a method. The obligation is that pests are kept out and got rid of. How that happens is left to the business.
- It applies to the premises and to vehicles that carry food
- It covers preventing pests living on site, not only killing the ones seen
- Standard 3.2.3 is the separate one about how premises and equipment are designed and built, including sealing gaps and screening openings
Do you have to hire a pest control company?
No. Food Standards Australia New Zealand says so plainly in its own guidance: a professional is not required, and its position is that if a business cannot manage pests properly then it should call one in.
That is worth knowing in both directions. A store is not breaking the Code because it has no pest contract. A store with a monthly contract is not compliant because of the contract either, if the back door still props open and the bins sit against the wall.
What an inspector assesses is the outcome and the evidence behind it. In practice, across a store estate, a contract is usually the cheapest way to produce that evidence consistently. That is a commercial argument rather than a legal one, and it is worth making as one.
What should a pest management plan cover?
FSANZ's guidance sets out what a plan needs to deal with. None of this is exotic, and all of it is checkable on a walk around:
| Part of the plan | What it has to settle |
|---|---|
| Pests and treatments | Which pests are likely here, and what is used for each |
| Areas | Behind and under equipment, wall cavities, cupboards, inside and under packaging |
| Device locations | Where bait stations and traps sit, usually as a site map |
| Placement rule | Never where pesticide or a dead pest could reach food or a food contact surface |
| Frequency | Set by location, climate, the food handled and the pest activity seen |
| Pesticides | Approved for use in food premises, within date, with safety information |
The frequency line is the one that cannot be answered from a desk. A bakery in a warm coastal centre and a bottle shop in a cool inland strip do not need the same visit interval, and a plan that gives every site in a fleet the same number has not been thought about.
What will an inspector ask to see?
Records, mostly. The plan itself, then evidence that it was followed:
- Inspection and treatment reports, dated
- What pest activity was found, not only that a visit happened
- Which chemicals or controls were used
- What was done about anything found, and whether it worked
A report that records no activity every month for two years, at a site with a loading dock, tells an inspector that nobody is really looking. Findings and the fixes that followed are better evidence than a clean sheet.
How does this work across a store fleet?
The obligation sits with each premises, so a head office cannot discharge it centrally. What head office can do is remove the reasons sites fail: write one standard for what a visit covers and what a report records, set the frequency per site rather than per brand, and fix the building faults that keep letting pests in.
Those building faults are usually the real problem and they are rarely a pest controller's job: door seals and strip curtains, gaps at service penetrations, bin areas that drain the wrong way, roof and gutter debris. Treating monthly while leaving a gap under a roller door is paying to manage a symptom.
That is how Nextage scopes it. Baiting and treatment run to one written standard with a report per site, and the exclusion work, the seals, the gaps and the bin area, is picked up as building work on the same visit rather than raised as someone else's problem.
