Fotolec Technologies is calling for standardisation of electric fly killers (EFK), for the benefits of pest controllers and pest control businesses.
Chris Payne, chairman of Fotolec Technologies, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in UK, said: “We can see benefits in the pest control industry of some standardisation on catch rate and output, so customers can have a choice.
“The actual fly catch currently is completely unregulated, there is no standard. You could literally put a blue lamp in an EFK and claim that it catches flies, and there’s nothing policing that.”
Jasmin Emmerson, sales director of Fotolec Technologies, added that the topic of a standard comes up when she attends NPTA’s On the Road Days.
“I often do a talk opening up pest controllers’ eyes to this, and lots of them come up to me and say we need a standard because they don’t actually know what they’re buying in terms of fly catch,” Ms Emmerson said.
“It seems at the minute that anyone can put an EFK on the market and sell it, and there’s no standard. If I’m a food manufacturer, I want to know what I’m buying and putting on the wall will catch flies.”
Ms Emmerson added that from a pest controller’s perspective, if they’ve specified a product, thinking it does its job, and the end user’s unhappy with the fly catch, it puts them in quite an embarrassing situation, unknowingly.
“I think what doesn’t help is that when we had fluorescent lamps, they were all quite predictable,” Ms Emmerson said.
“Now we’re in LED territory, where there’s such a vast difference in efficacy from one brand to the next. How would a pest controller know what’s worth buying and what isn’t? Manufacturers are going to tell you that theirs is excellent, so some sort of independent standard would enable pest controllers to make an informed decision.”
