Aaron McMillan
Senior Editor
Procurement Magazine
EDITORS INTRODUCTION
THE NATIONAL PEST MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION AND PROCUREMENT MAGAZINE SURVEY 2026
PEST CONTROL rarely gets top billing in procurement strategy conversations. It sits below cybersecurity, below supply chain resilience, often below catering and cleaning in the pecking order of facilities spend. Yet a new survey of procurement professionals across manufacturing, retail, food & beverage, healthcare and logistics suggests that ranking doesn’ t match the risk on the table.
The numbers tell an uncomfortable story. Three in four respondents point to health and safety incidents as the top risk of skipping professional pest control, with regulatory fines, operational disruption and brand damage close behind. Yet only a third say the strategic importance of pest control is fully understood within their organization. The rest describe it as acknowledged but under-prioritized, or treated purely as a compliance cost. Pest control gets treated like a cost until an audit, a complaint or a shutdown forces attention.
That gap between known risk and actual attention is where most procurement categories eventually get caught out, and pest control looks no exception.
What’ s striking is how many departments now have a hand in the decision. Procurement leads vendor selection in the vast majority of organizations, but facilities management and health & safety are close behind, with operations and sustainability teams increasingly in the room too. That’ s not necessarily bad news, shared oversight can mean better risk coverage, but it also raises a harder question about ownership: when multiple departments touch a decision, who is actually accountable for the outcome once the contract is signed?
By combining industry expert insight from Dr Jim Fredericks with editorial analysis from myself, drawing from wider procurement and facilities risk trends, this report provides a practical benchmark for organizations looking to modernize their approach to pest control procurement.
6 The NPMA and Procurement Magazine Survey 2026