It’ s more cost effective and safer to prevent an incident than to react to one
Dr. Jim Fredericks
Sr. Vice President, Public Affairs
NPMA
What stands out in this survey is the gap between risk reality and day-today priority. Only 36 % say pest control’ s strategic importance is fully understood and essential, while 41 % say it’ s acknowledged but not prioritized. Yet respondents clearly recognize what’ s at stake: 77 % point to health and safety incidents, 65 % to regulatory / legal fines, and 59 % to operational disruption as risks of not using professional pest control. That disconnect is where organizations get exposed. Pest control gets treated like a cost until an audit, a complaint, or a shutdown forces attention. Mature organizations flip that approach: they invest in prevention, documentation and corrective actions because it’ s more cost effective and safer to prevent an incident than to react to one.
Pest control’ s problem isn’ t visibility, it’ s sequencing: it gets funded after the fact, not ahead of it
Aaron McMillan
Senior Editor
Procurement Magazine
The gap Fredericks flags – 77 % naming health and safety risk, only 36 % saying the strategic case is fully understood – is the classic procurement blind spot: risk is well documented on paper, poorly priced in practice. It’ s the same pattern seen in cybersecurity and supply chain resilience spend, where budget follows incidents rather than probability. Pest control’ s problem isn’ t visibility, it’ s sequencing: it gets funded after the fact, not ahead of it.
Section 2: Strategic Perception & Organizational Value 19