Farms & Agriculture
The rules on farm rodent control changed in 2024 and a lot of farms are still working to the old ones. Shield builds a programme that is legal, evidenced and actually effective through harvest and housing, and produces the survey records your assessor asks for as part of the service.
At a Glance
Farm pest control is a documented, risk-led programme covering grain and crop stores, feed stores, livestock housing, the yard and the fabric of every building, with toxic bait used only where it is justified and only where it is still permitted. Since 1 January 2025 second-generation anticoagulants can no longer be used away from buildings in Great Britain, so open-area baiting that was routine on many farms is no longer lawful. What replaces it is proofing, habitat management, trapping and targeted control in and around buildings, evidenced with dated site surveys, a bait plan and an environmental risk assessment.
Across the Farm
Rodent pressure on a farm is seasonal, structural and almost entirely predictable. Knowing where it will be in November is what separates a programme from a reaction.
The highest-value target on the holding and the one with the tightest rules. Only gel or paste products may go inside a store holding combinable crops, in lockable boxes fixed to the building and recorded on a store map.
Spilled feed is the single largest food source on most farms. Control here is housekeeping, bin design and proofing long before it is bait.
Constant food, water and warmth, and a population that moves in as soon as stock are housed. Non-toxic monitoring and exclusion do most of the work where animals are present.
Straw and bale stacks, redundant machinery, tyre piles and waste heaps are classic harbourage, and they are exactly where open-area baiting used to happen and no longer can.
Vegetation against buildings is the quickest non-conformance an assessor writes and the easiest thing to fix. Margins are managed by habitat and trapping, not by bait.
Empty stores, seasonal buildings and anything mid-conversion. Rodents establish in the quiet months and are found at the worst possible moment.
The Programme
Quarterly on combinable crops, annually on livestock while stock are housed, dated and recording where was inspected, what was found, what action is needed and when it was completed.
The hierarchy is not a formality. Spillage, vegetation, stacked materials and entry points are dealt with before anything toxic is considered, because that is what actually reduces the population.
Around livestock, in grain stores and anywhere non-target risk is high, monitoring and trapping carry the programme and give you activity data without a permanent bait presence.
Where toxic control is justified, it is used in and around buildings only, to the CRRU Code, with an environmental risk assessment completed first and the bait taken up and recorded at the end of the treatment.
Site surveys, bait plan, environmental risk assessment, store bait box map and COSHH, produced by the visit rather than assembled before the assessment.
Harvest, housing and the first cold snap are when pressure moves indoors. Visit scheduling is set around your calendar, with 24-hour emergency response when something arrives early.
Where the Farm Meets the Food Chain
The vermin control standards your assessment works through, including the grain store baiting rules.
Where a packhouse, mill or store sits inside a food safety scheme as well as farm assurance.
Programmes for BRCGS, SALSA and retailer specifications where produce is handled on site.
Long-term storage, racking and yards, where stored product insects matter as much as rodents.
The prevention, detection and control framework that every scheme now expects to see documented.
Non-target risk, CRRU compliance and how Shield keeps rodenticide use proportionate.
The 2024 Rule Change
The Health and Safety Executive withdrew the authorisations that allowed the two second-generation anticoagulants available for outdoor use, bromadiolone and difenacoum, to be used in open areas and at waste dumps in Great Britain. Sale for those uses ended on 4 July 2024 and use ended on 31 December 2024. Since 1 January 2025, putting either product out along a hedgerow, around a stack, at a waste heap or anywhere else away from a building has been illegal. The other high-potency actives, brodifacoum, difethialone and flocoumafen, were already restricted to use in and around buildings. What remains is in and around buildings, to the CRRU Code, with an environmental risk assessment behind it. Away from buildings the answer is now habitat management, proofing, trapping and other non-anticoagulant methods, which takes more planning and rather more skill than a line of bait points did. It also means an assessor finding open-area bait on your holding is looking at a legal problem, not just a paperwork one.
Our Method
A field biologist walks the grain stores, feed stores, livestock buildings, yard and the fabric of every structure, and writes the survey against the standards your holding is assessed to. Proofing and housekeeping recommendations come first and are assigned to an owner. Where toxic control is justified, the environmental risk assessment is completed before anything goes down and the bait plan is drawn and numbered, with a store map where paste is used inside a grain store. At ninety days you have a dated survey record, a current plan, a closing action list and a programme that is defensible on the day an assessor arrives.
AI Pest Management
Insectram holds the yard and store plans, the numbered points, the environmental risk assessment, the bait plan, baiting and removal records, COSHH and every dated survey, against the holding rather than in a file someone has to find. Activity is trended across the year, so the seasonal pattern on your farm becomes something you can plan around instead of something you react to. Recommendations carry an owner and a date. An assessor can be given direct access for the assessment window and read the evidence at source.
Pests We Manage
Stores, yards, drainage and stack bases
Grain stores, feed rooms and workshops
Livestock housing, stores and roof spaces
Housing, slurry and muck stores
Grain, feed and long-term storage
Roof voids, stores and workshops
Grassland, paddocks and grounds
Roof spaces, lofts and outbuildings
Client Feedback
“Shield’s audit compliance support for our BRCGS certification has been invaluable. Their knowledge of the standards has made our audits much more streamlined.”
Food Manufacturing
“Shield’s pest awareness training for our food production team was fantastic. The course was informative, engaging, and tailored to our specific needs.”
Food Production
“We’ve been using Shield’s Insectram reporting system and it has changed how we manage pest control. Real-time updates and trend analysis keep us proactive.”
Multi-site Facilities
Areas We Cover
Based in Selby, in the middle of the Vale of York arable belt, Shield services farms, grain stores, feed stores, packhouses and livestock buildings across Yorkshire, the Humber and the North of England. Independent since 2002, BPCA registered, CRRU compliant, CHAS accredited, £10m public liability, 24-hour emergency response.
A Shield field biologist will walk the stores, the housing and the yard, tell you whether your current control would stand up to an assessment and to the rodenticide rules as they are now, and set out what needs to change. No obligation.
A: No, not a second-generation anticoagulant. The authorisations for bromadiolone and difenacoum in open areas and at waste dumps were withdrawn in Great Britain: sale for those uses ended on 4 July 2024 and use ended on 31 December 2024. Since 1 January 2025 that use has been illegal, and the other high-potency actives were already restricted to in and around buildings. Control away from buildings now means habitat management, proofing, trapping and non-anticoagulant methods, planned rather than improvised.
A: Yes, but the evidence burden is the same either way: a dated site survey at the frequency your scheme sets, an environmental risk assessment before any toxic bait, a bait plan with locations, bait type, inspection dates and replenishment, no permanent baiting, and a COSHH assessment where five or more people are employed. For toxic paste in a grain store there is an extra requirement: farm staff must read and document Red Tractor's safe mouse control guidance, and a professional contractor is exempt from that. The full detail is on the Red Tractor page.
A: Two likely reasons and they need different answers. The first is that the population has a food source you have not removed, which is almost always spillage, stacked materials or an entry point, and no amount of bait fixes it. The second is anticoagulant resistance, which is well documented in UK rat and mouse populations and can be confirmed by testing rather than guessed at. Increasing the amount of bait is the wrong response to both. A field biologist survey will tell you which one you are dealing with.
