January 19, 2022
For restaurants, rodents like mice are a nightmare. Rochesters Restaurants and food service facilities of all kinds need to keep vigilant when it comes to pest control. If pest control for mice is lacking, the following are some of the effects.
Spoiled food. Ripped flour bags, bitten vegetables, chewed meat, thefts of sugary item, sticky tracks, and spills. This wastes money and if the food is used, can make people sick. Never, ever use food that mice have been at, even if you plan to stew it for hours.
Diseases like hantavirus. Hantavirus is painful inside and out, causing vomiting, dizziness, and chills. Leptospirosis (also called Weil’s disease) causes symptoms like jaundice, high fever, vomiting, and generalized muscle pain. Salmonellosis brings on diarrhea, fever, and severe abdominal pain. It may not manifest for weeks after exposure, making it hard to know where it came from. Tularemia is contracted by breathing in the bacteria and causes difficulty breathing, coughing, and flu-like symptoms that make it easy to misdiagnose. Another disease brought to us by mice is the plague. The plague still exists, and it can still kill you, especially if misdiagnosed or not treated quickly. Symptoms of plague are weakness, bleeding from various orifices, and tissue death. Charming, right?
Mice can carry parasites on and in themselves. Fleas from mice and rats are what transmitted the plague back in the Middle Ages and it’s still that way today. Mice also carry ticks, which can spread Lyme disease and cause lesions that can become infected.
If one person sees a mouse in your restaurant and leaves a negative review, that could be enough word of mouth to damage your bottom line beyond repair. One mouse can cancel out ten glowing reviews about fine food, good service, and banging karaoke nights.
Mice are an enormous health code violation. If a health inspector comes in and sees mouse feces, mouse corpses, or other signs of mice indoors or outdoors, that can get you shut down and/or heavy fines. Restaurant upkeep is expensive enough already.
Structural damage. If there’s one thing mice and similar rodents are good at doing, it’s chewing. Mice will chew anything they can sink their little teeth into, including food packaging, wood, cardboard, insulation, drywall, rubber, adhesive, water lines, gas lines, and electric wires. This can lead to problems like mildew, fungus, gas leaks, and fires. Gas can’t always be smelled over other kitchen odors, and if a fire starts inside a wall, it can ruin the building before it is noticed.
The holes mice make let in other pests, like wasps, flies, rats, and cockroaches. These come to eat the smorgasbord a restaurant offers as well as garbage and dead mice. Mice that die in unseen corners stink, and the flies that feed on them proliferate with disturbing speed.
Mice breed quickly, have large litters, and become sexually mature in a matter of weeks. If there is still enough food, water, and shelter, they won’t see a reason to move out and will raise their own families. Mice prefer not to be seen, so if you’ve seen even one, there’s already a significant problem.
Do you own or work at a restaurant in Rochester? Do you remember the last time a pest control professional came over to do an inspection? Pest control for restaurants in Rochester is essential to keep the public healthy and the restaurants successful. Give us a call at (585) 486-4815 or contact us on our website for any questions. If you eat at a restaurant that uses Rochester Pest Pro, you can be confident that no pests are coming to dinner.