Miller Magazine Issue: 131 November 2020

76 MILLER / November 2020 “With today’s stringent requirements by the FDA and food safety organizations, together with external auditing by the clients, millers are required to deliver safe food without the threat of infestation. Maintaining housekeeping and daily routine inspection of the plants and prioritizing work that needs to be done with an emphasis on leaks will surely help any good miller to control infestation in his/her plant.” Controlling infestation in a mill INFESTATION Infestation is a millers’ greatest challenge. This is one aspect in the mill that has a mil- ler running around and at times pulling out his hair. This is because infestation leads to many returns to the mill and often can result in losing good customers and can even lead to questi- ons about the companies’ integrity. With to- day’s stringent requirements by the FDA and food safety organizations, together with exter- nal auditing by the clients, millers are requi- red to deliver safe food without the threat of infestation. The practical way to overcoming the issue is to properly clean the mill and all associated equipment. Most mills today, hire outsourced cleaning teams for this function, a function that requires the team to know and understand the effect of deep cleaning as well as surface cleaning. In most cases, this team is not thoroughly trained and do not understand the impact their perfor- mance has on the facility. It is often claimed that wheat being brought to any milling facility is insect-free. The ques- tion to be asked is, “Where then do the inse- cts come from?” If not from the grain, then where? Most grain pest controllers claim that to prevent infestation more regular pesticide application and fumigation needs to be done. From a professional miller and pest controller’s perspective, I am absolutely certain that the method that I apply works. Cleaning! We all know is 98% of pest cont- rol while application accounts for the other 2%. When a mill is stopped for miller’s ma- Ronald D. Sebastian Milling Technical and Mechanical Specialist Consultant