The pest reference a restaurant manager should have been handed years ago

What the rules say, what the inspector actually writes, what it costs your reputation, what defends you when a complaint becomes a claim, and what the pests are and how they are removed. Written by a Board Certified Entomologist, anchored to primary sources, and free. También en español.

What the county actually cites

Measured across the Salt Lake County Health Department's public inspection records, in aggregate, with a snapshot date of 2026-11-02. No restaurant is identified anywhere on this site.

The findings, with every number → · The dashboard → · How the analysis is done and what it will never do →

Your Inspection Report

What the pest lines on a Salt Lake County report mean, what inspectors cite most across thousands of public reports (in aggregate, never by name), what comes back, and what fixes it.

• How to Read the Pest Lines on a Salt Lake County Inspection ReportThe columns on a county report, what the score and rank mean in the county's own words, the asterisks, follow-ups and the fee, and how to turn a pest line into a work order.
• Dead Pests Are Their Own Line: Why a Working Treatment Can Still Be CitedRemoving dead or trapped pests is a requirement on its own, separate from controlling them. A bait treatment that is working leaves exactly what gets cited. The fix is a cleanup routine, written down.
• What Salt Lake County Inspectors Actually Cite for PestsAcross 8,378 routine inspections in two years, about one in six carried a pest-related line. Most were about openings, not infestations. The critical ones were flies, cockroaches and store-bought pesticide.
• What Comes Back: Repeat Pest Findings at the Next InspectionAfter a pest line, about one in three of the next routine inspections within a year carried one too; the county-wide baseline is one in seven. Three in ten follow-up inspections still carried a pest line.
• Is There a Pest Season? Month by Month in Salt Lake County InspectionsThe share of inspections with a pest line barely moves through the year. The one clear season is flies in August and September. The data do not show a fall mouse peak, so this page does not claim one.
• Pest Lines, the Score and the Follow-Up InspectionInspections with a pest line averaged 32 points against 18 without; a follow-up came within 60 days three to seven times as often. Pest lines travel with other problems, and the critical ones bring the inspector back.

What the Rules Say

The FDA Food Code, Utah R392-100, the county health regulations and the pesticide and label laws that reach a kitchen, quoted from the primary text.

• The FDA Food Code on Pests: Every Section a County Inspector CitesThe eleven Food Code sections behind the pest lines on a county report, quoted word for word with FDA's stated reason for each, and the county code that cites each one.
• Utah R392-100: Which Food Code Utah Adopted, and What the State Law Behind It Says About PestsUtah adopted the 2022 FDA Food Code by rule. The state's exceptions do not reach the pest sections. The statutes that give the state and the county health departments their authority over restaurants and pests.
• Salt Lake County Health Regulation #5: The Pest Rules, Inspections and Enforcement StepsThe county regulation behind every code on your report: its pest sections, how critical items are defined, how often inspections come, the correction deadlines, the follow-up fee, and what happens after a notice of violation.
• Utah County Regulation 26-01: Progressive Enforcement for Retail Food, Adopted July 2026Utah County adopted a progressive-enforcement regulation on July 27, 2026. No point score; a ladder of steps from follow-up inspection to Permit Status Hearing and Probationary Status; $140 follow-up fee. The county's inspection lookup could not be verified.
• Who May Apply Pesticide in a Utah Kitchen, and With WhatThe label decides what may be used in a kitchen; Utah law decides who may apply it. The question of a cook spraying a store-bought aerosol is stated as open, with both rule texts quoted.
• Two More Pest Rules That Reach a Food Business: OSHA's Vermin Control Standard and 21 CFR 117.35OSHA's workplace sanitation standard applies to a restaurant as an employer, and 21 CFR 117.35(c) applies to a commissary or manufacturer. Both quoted.

The Pests

German cockroaches, mice and rats, flies and drain flies, fruit flies, stored-product pests, ants and birds: biology and control at the standard a Board Certified Entomologist would sign.

• German Cockroaches in a Restaurant: How They Arrive, Where They Live, and What Actually Removes ThemThey ride in on deliveries and boxes, live where it is warm, wet and dark, and are removed by sanitation, bait, monitors that prove the kill, and cleanup of the droppings and dead. What the Salmonella research does and does not show.
• House Mice and Norway Rats: A Quarter Inch Is a DoorMice fit through a quarter inch; young rats fit under a half-inch door gap. Seal everything over a quarter inch, keep the sanitation going, and let the stations and traps do the rest, with the counts written down.
• Flies in a Kitchen: House Flies, Drain Flies, and the Film in the DrainHouse flies come through the door and breed at the dumpster. Drain flies breed in the film inside the drain, and only scrubbing it out removes them; boiling water alone will not. Never a fly strip over food.
• Fruit Flies: Find the Fermenting ThingEvery fruit fly is a sign of something fermenting within a few yards. The fix is finding it: produce, drains, mop heads and buckets, recycling, the wet spot behind the bar.
• Stored-Product Pests in Dry Storage: Meal Moths, Grain Beetles, Flour Beetles and the Cigarette BeetleThey come in with the product and live in it. Find the infested case, throw it out, put what stays in tight-lidded containers, inspect the next delivery, and let a pheromone monitor tell you when you are done.
• Ants in a Kitchen: Why a Spray Can Make Some Colonies WorseBaits, not sprays. For the Pharaoh ant, a spray can split the colony and spread it. That is documented for that species; this page does not generalize it to every ant.
• Birds at the Patio and the Dumpster: Pigeons and House SparrowsBirds are an exclusion and sanitation problem: netting, ledge deterrents, closed openings, screened vents, and a clean patio and dumpster. Droppings that accumulate are the health concern the sources name.

Your Reputation

How inspection results become public in Utah, what customers see, the first hour after a sighting, and the calm way to answer all of it.

• How Inspection Results Become Public in Utah, and Who Copies ThemIn Salt Lake County every inspection is public the next business day, with the score, rank and each violation line, back to 2008. Review sites copy it and may be stale. Complaint and illness investigations are not online.
• What a Customer Actually Sees: Reading Your Own Public Record the Way They DoA customer sees a rank and a list of lines. A pest line among many other lines reads one way; a single pest line on a clean history reads another. The county tells customers to read the history. So should you.
• The First Hour: When a Customer or an Employee Sees a PestCare for the person, then the evidence, then the log, then the call. What to say is short and true; what not to say is anything that argues.
• Can You Ask for a Re-Inspection? Follow-Ups, Reinspection After a Suspension, and the ConferenceThe county schedules follow-ups; after a suspension you may request reinspection in writing to the named representative; after a notice of violation you may request a conference. No general 're-inspect me' process was found.

What Defends You

Foodborne-illness and foreign-object claims, premises liability, negligence per se, lease pest clauses, insurance described plainly, and the records courts have weighed. Not legal advice.

• An Insect or a Foreign Object in the Food: How Courts Have Decided These ClaimsTwo tests decide most of these cases, and both ask what a reasonable diner would expect. Utah's only foreign-object decisions are bottled-beverage cases from 1950 and 1960; no Utah restaurant case was found.
• Foodborne Illness Claims, and Whether a Health-Code Violation Is Negligence by ItselfCausation is the hard part of a food-poisoning case, and courts have gone both ways on the same kind of proof. In Utah a code violation is prima facie evidence of negligence, not negligence per se, and no Utah case has applied that rule to a restaurant's food-code line.
• A Customer Bitten or Stung: Premises Liability for PestsA restaurant owes its customers reasonable care about pests on the premises; that is the holding of the one appellate pest-bite case found. In Utah the invitee standard turns on notice and time to fix, or on whether the owner created the condition. No Utah pest case found.
• Your Lease and Your Insurance: Where Pest Duties and Pest Claims LandThe lease decides who fixes the back door. Utah law makes rent depend on the landlord's important covenants, but no case allocates pest duties in a restaurant lease. On insurance, two state supreme courts read the same exclusion opposite ways; the wording and the state decide.
• Pest Records That Hold Up: What Courts Have Actually Looked AtNo restaurant case has turned on pest-control service records; sighting logs and inspection evidence have cut both ways. Six records, each tied to a rule, kept in one binder, with the 'what was done' column filled in.

Not sure what it is?

Text a clear photo to (801) 477-0223 and I'll identify it the same day. — Trenton S. Frazer, M.S., BCE #B3413