Don’t Overlook Calibration of Pesticide Measuring Scales

Properly measuring dry formulations of pesticides can definitely have an impact on food safety.

However, this is often overlooked and I recently forgot to include it in a written food safety program and had to include it as part of a client’s corrective actions for their audit.

So my recommendations are to have a SOP and corresponding log that specifies that pesticide measuring scales will be calibrated per the manufacturer’s guidelines or pre-season for seasonal operations and quarterly for year-round operations if manufacturer’s guidelines do not exist.  And as-needed when a problem comes up or you think that a scale is not measuring properly.

These scales should also be on your preventive maintenance program.

Stainless steel calibration weight kits are not that expensive and are useful for proper calibration.

*Note – if you are measuring any sanitation chemicals by weight you will also need a SOP and log for these situations as well.

“Learned It The Hard Way So You Don’t Have To!”