February 5, 2021
Looking to start a business with resilience and service demand? Consider pest control. Today's post highlights 4 factors underpinning Pestmaster's "essential business" designation.
Pest Control Industry Receives Essential Business Designation In 2020
On March 19th, 2020, Christopher Krebs, the director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), published a memo titled "Memorandum on Identification of Essential Critical Infrastructure Workers During the COVID-19 Response." Therein, Krebs confirmed what most Americans knew already: pest control is an essential industry that must remain in operation through the pandemic, even in the event of another lockdown.
While the pest control industry has always played an essential role in the protection of public health, food, and property for homes and businesses nationwide, this new designation gives pest control owners important peace of mind during uncertain times, ensuring our business continuity for the foreseeable future.
What follows is a brief overview of 4 key factors driving this essential business designation.
Why Is Pest Control An Essential Business?
1. Pest Control Businesses Protect Our Nation's Food Supply
Food processing plants, warehouses, packaging facilities, stockrooms, food preparation areas, and food retailers all pose tantalizing targets for all kinds of pests. Pest control companies play an essential role in reducing these threats to our nation's food supply.
2. Pest Control Businesses Keep Other Essential Businesses Afloat
In a survey conducted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), researchers determined that more than 70% of businesses in five different countries suffer significant financial losses during infestations—and this was pre-pandemic. With a huge percentage of businesses already struggling due to the pressures imposed by social distancing, mandated closures, and orders to shelter-in-place, preventing and treating infestations in a cost-effective manner is absolutely essential.
3. Pest Control Businesses Facilitate Safe Sheltering-In-Place
Until the pandemic threat period has passed, Americans will be spending more time at home than ever before. At the same time, as businesses remain closed or limited in operation, many pests and rodents will be seeking new sources of food, water, and shelter—which means an influx of household pests.
Pest control companies play an essential role in eliminating these household pests, which are a primary cause of frustration, anxiety, discomfort, structural damage, and infectious diseases. In this way, we facilitate safe and comfortable sheltering-in-place for Americans during the pandemic threat period.
4. Pest Control Businesses Provide Critical Vector Controls
According to the World Health Organization, vectors are "living organisms that transmit infectious diseases between humans or from animal to human." The most common vectors for humans are mosquitos and ticks—both of which experienced considerable population growth in 2020.
Though SARS-CoV2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is a respiratory virus that rarely gets into the blood, and therefore isn't likely to spread through tick or mosquito bites, vector controls still play an important part in the fight against COVID-19. For example, the CDC has already stated how people with certain medical conditions and diseases, some of which are transmitted by vectors, are at increased risk of COVID-19 infection.
