"Everyone in the industry knows some people operate this way. To be honest, sometimes we tell clients, but they don't listen." That's what one industry practitioner told Zhiwei about using dichlorvos for restaurant pest control.
Recently, The Beijing News conducted an undercover investigation exposing Xiamen Green Forest Environmental Technology Co., Ltd.'s use of dichlorvos for pest control. This pest control company has long provided services to dozens of chain restaurants, including Green Tea, Xian Qi Ban Bu Tiao, Chi Nai, Feng Yuan Jia Gang Shi Cha Dian, and Yu Zhi Sushi.
Investigations by Zhi Wei found that "Pest Control Operations (PCO)", a crucial aspect of catering operations, has long been neglected and has extremely low barriers to entry, resulting in chaos.
As an organophosphorus insecticide, "Dichlorvos" is mainly used for pest control in agriculture. Currently, some domestic regions, such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen, have explicitly required various units to strictly prohibit the use of Dichlorvos and other medium- to high-toxicity organophosphorus pesticides when carrying out environmental disinfection. However, according to inquiries made by Zhidanger, multiple industry insiders generally believe that this is not an isolated incident.
Huasheng Anhe Environmental Technology Co., Ltd.'s Manager Du told Zhiwei: "Regular companies generally mix and use formaldehyde and pyrethroid-based medicines, and make different drug ratios according to different situations and pests. However, medicines like pyrethroids, or those used to kill mosquitoes, flies, and moths, generally only last for 48 hours, but medicines like dichlorvos have a residual efficacy period of up to half a month."
And the longer residual time is exactly what unqualified disinfection companies take advantage of.
Manager Du explained to Zhi Wei, "DDT is actually not particularly toxic in the category of pesticides, and many insects outside have even developed resistance to it. However, indoor insects have almost no resistance to DDT, so its efficacy indoors is particularly good. Therefore, some unscrupulous pest control companies may use DDT without the client's knowledge, which would make the client feel that the service is not only clean but also long-lasting, with no pest issues for a long time, and the effect appears to be very good on the surface."
So, procurement parties and consumers should be cautious when choosing pest control teams that claim to be "effective for a year with one treatment". If they are indeed effective for one to two years, it may not necessarily be due to good technology, but possibly because they are "using strong chemicals".
Many readers who have come into contact with dichlorvos in the past may find it strange that, given its strong odor, it was not detected.
Due to the fact that the current adware has a strong stealth capability.
Manager Du told Zhiwei that improved versions of Dichlorvos have already been circulating on the market, which have almost no pungent smell, making it difficult for customers to distinguish through sensory means.
Apart from the obvious effectiveness and "concealability" of dichlorvos itself, the most fundamental reason why unscrupulous pest control companies use dichlorvos is its "cost advantage".
The cost of dichlorvos itself is very low, and it also requires a large amount of water for dilution when used. Manager Du told Zhiwei: "The cost of dichlorvos is extremely low, with a bottle costing around 10 to 20 yuan, but for a treatment of 150 to 200 square meters, only 3 to 5 yuan worth is needed. However, for the better, more formal pesticides we use, the cost is much higher in comparison. For the same area, the cost of pesticides for one treatment could be nearly 100 yuan.
That is to say, the cost of regular and irregular disinfection drugs differs by 20 to 30 times.
Such low costs enable unqualified pest control companies to offer even lower quotes, and with better and longer-lasting effects, they can easily win the favor of catering businesses.
The fundamental reason these disinfection companies are taking such desperate risks is that the industry has become increasingly difficult to operate in.
Manager Du said: "In the past two years, for example, restaurants with an area of around 150 to 200 square meters, we would do it once or twice a month, and if we charge per operation, the quote would be around 500 yuan per time. Now it's 200 to 300 yuan, and many restaurants are still doing it. However, I would rather not do it if the price is too low, and I won't try to reduce our costs by all means because of the price, because the cost of formal operations is already a bit high, and we also need to bear the risk of using drugs and other aspects."
An industry insider engaged in pest control work in Suzhou also told Zhiwei: "In previous years, profits were much higher, but now prices have dropped by almost half. Some stores are not making a profit, but in order to keep employees, they have to take on low-priced orders. Being able to earn enough to pay staff is a good result."
The entire pest control industry is heavily reliant on establishments such as restaurants and hotels, but in recent years, many food and beverage and hotel clients have gone out of business. Meanwhile, clients that are still in operation have generally reduced their budgets for pest control services, resulting in a lackluster outlook for the industry as a whole.
Of course, contraction on the demand side is only one aspect, while the supply side is still experiencing further disordered competition.
There are industry insiders who say that the barriers to entry for pest control services are not high, resulting in many individuals who do oil fume cleaning and housekeeping services to start providing pest control services after discovering demand from clients, with some even buying medicines online or registering a company to do this work.
Manager Du mentioned: "Some medicines can also be purchased online, although there are many sales companies now, many of these sales companies actually do not have a license to sell medicines."
Currently, many small and medium-sized disinfection and extermination companies on the market have varying levels of qualifications for both the companies and their employees.
According to sources from the company, to engage in this business, the only required qualification is a business license, and the business scope needs to include services such as hazardous biological control and disease vector biological control.
Liu Yang, technical advisor at the Guangdong Provincial Center for Prevention and Control of Harmful Organisms, told Zhiwei: "The market access threshold for the harmful organism prevention and control industry is relatively low. After completing industrial and commercial registration and including harmful organism prevention and control, and disease vector organism prevention and control in their business scope, enterprises can undertake routine businesses such as household rodent and cockroach control, and small restaurant services. From a national regulatory perspective, there are no uniform, mandatory enterprise access qualifications; however, if participating in bidding and undertaking high-demand projects such as food processing plants, schools, medical institutions, and large commercial complexes, the client usually requires enterprises to provide industry service capability evaluation materials as a reference for bid evaluation."
Liu Yang added that the A/B/C level hazardous biological control service enterprise qualifications often mentioned by everyone belong to the industry's service capability evaluation certificate, and are not government administrative license qualifications. The issuing entities are mostly local industry associations or registered third-party professional evaluation institutions, and different issuing units have different evaluation standards and application conditions.
At the implementation level, for the frontline workers who actually carry out disinfection operations, current policies do not have mandatory "access-level" qualification certificates at the national level, such as medical practitioner qualification certificates, which are required to practice medicine. Instead, they only have "level evaluation" qualification certificates, similar to welder levels, which represent the holder's level of expertise.
Liu Yang told Zhi Wei: "The certificate for pest control operators has been removed from the National Occupational Qualification Directory for human resources access. Currently, the skill level certification work for this occupation is undertaken by enterprise evaluation organizations and social evaluation organizations that have completed the filing, which are responsible for assessment and certification. "
Liu Yang also mentioned: "The certification examination for pest control professionals is divided into two main modules: theoretical knowledge and practical skills. The theoretical examination is mainly composed of multiple-choice questions, while the practical examination typically uses a combination of on-site simulation operations and oral descriptions of key points. After undergoing systematic training, mastering basic theories and operational norms, and possessing corresponding practical abilities, it is not difficult to pass the examination."
Currently, only some local regulations have set regional access criteria, requiring relevant disinfection workers to have certificates.
In other words, the disinfection business can be started simply by registering a company with a business scope that includes relevant items, without even needing to obtain a certificate. It's only when trying to win larger and better orders through bidding that it becomes necessary to apply for qualifications and increase the number of certified personnel.
Du Jing told Zhiwei that while the industry has a low entry barrier, doing it "professionally" is actually not simple. "Personally, I think it's like how having a driver's license doesn't mean you can actually drive well. Beyond the qualification certificate, attention should also be paid to the standardization of medication use and the results after the procedure."
Manager Du said that before going independent in this line of work, he spent five years apprenticing under a mentor in Shenzhen. He learned how to formulate pesticides for different scenarios and how to use equipment to achieve more thorough disinfection. He also had to understand the habits of rodents and various pests — down to being able to distinguish their droppings, footprints, and other traces. Only with that level of detail could he determine where to place treatments for maximum effectiveness.
In this incident, the "compliance" of the disinfection team is indeed a key issue that needs to be discussed and focused on, but at the same time, the choices and practices of the market procurement parties (chain restaurants, hotels, maternity centers, etc.) are also worthy of attention.
Manager Du told Zhiwei that many businesses are not strict enough with their own requirements. He mentioned: "Many small businesses basically buy disinfectants online themselves to do disinfection. What's even more outrageous is that some hotels will openly tell you: 'I just want to pass the inspection, so just do it casually,' and then offer a very low price."
Manager Du explained that if a client insists on pest control merely to pass an inspection while offering only a rock-bottom price, the service provider—mindful of costs—might resort to a single pesticide, applying it just for show. The results, however, would never match the effectiveness of a thorough extermination. "That's also why so many netizens complain about finding bugs in hotel rooms, even bedbugs and fleas. The reason is actually quite obvious."
Looking back at the entire incident, although many netizens and media outlets have repeatedly spoken out on behalf of the procurement party, industry insiders who have come into contact with Zhiwei unanimously believe that the procurement party cannot be considered "blameless".
An industry insider stated: "They look for these less formal companies, on one hand, because they are cheaper, and on the other hand, is it because the internal hygiene supervision of catering enterprises is not so perfect?"
Now that the malpractices of unscrupulous pest control companies have been exposed, we also expect further strengthening of regulation to curb the phenomenon of bad money driving out good, allowing genuinely responsible pest control companies to survive and thrive.