Measured, not marketed
The lab, in figures
Services & rates
The assay menu
Menu rates across Harlow Green and the Calloway park. The assay is credited against any protocol it initiates, and every protocol ships with the determination attached.
Species determination assay$40
Specimen or monitor sample to the bench, morphology keyed, determination and protocol sheet back inside 24 hours
German cockroach elimination$270 · two visits
Gel matrix by strain, growth regulator at the harborage, monitors counted at day 14 — two visits, closed on the count
Small-fly program — kitchens$190 / month
Drain and phorid flies keyed separately, biological drain treatment, breeding sites mapped on the floor plan
Stored-product moth program$150
Pheromone monitors on a grid, infested stock mapped and quarantined, placement at the shelving voids
Monitoring grid — commercial$58 / month
Sticky-board and pheromone grid installed and read monthly, trend reports for the audit binder
Compliance file — annual$210 / yr
SDS binder, placement logs, monitor trends and corrective actions, assembled to the shape your auditor already reads
How a protocol runs
Chain of custody, start to finish
Sample to bench to placement to verification — the same four stations on a studio kitchen and a food plant, with a paper trail that survives either one’s auditor. The verification step is the one that gets skipped in this trade, and it is the reason a Meridian file can be closed with a straight face.
Sample
Monitors down, specimens jarred, the site sketched. The assay runs on what was actually caught, not on what the internet decided it probably was.
Assay
The bench keys the species and strain — the bait matrix, the regulator and the placement map all follow from the determination, never the calendar.
Protocol
Placement by the map: gel in the voids, biologicals in the drains, regulators at the harborage. Re-entry 45 minutes; the log sheet travels with the tech.
Verify
Monitors re-read against day zero, the trend charted, the file closed on two clean reads. The chart goes in the binder and in your inbox.
The 45-day verification window
Every protocol carries one: if monitors show activity of the assayed species inside 45 days of the close, the re-run is free — assay, placement and verification, all of it. In nine years the free re-runs run 4 percent, and the trend charts say most of those were a new introduction, not a failure.
Why the paperwork matters
Built for kitchens that get inspected
A health auditor does not ask whether you sprayed; they ask what you placed, where, when, and what the counts did next. Meridian files answer in the auditor’s own shape: product by name and registration number, placement logs by station ID, monitor trends by month, corrective actions by date. Apartment buildings get the same file for a different audience — owners, insurers, and the occasional lawyer.
Harlow Green · 2025 — 2026
The bench work
Six stations off last quarter’s route — monitors, benches and placement days. The photography is deliberately plain; the work is deliberately exact.
Our third-party audit used to be a week of assembling pest paperwork. Meridian hands us a binder that is already in the auditor’s format — placement logs, safety sheets, trend charts — and the audit note has read "exemplary" for six straight quarters. The monitor grid found a drain-fly source we had blamed on the deliveries for a year.
The apartment file: roaches in a building I manage, three companies before them, all spray. Meridian assayed the strain — glucose-averse, which explained the entire failed history — ran the other gel, and the monitors were at zero by day 14. The determination letter hangs in the tenant meeting room, half as a joke, half not.
A restaurant kitchen at 2 a.m. is where their re-entry claim got tested: placements at close, forty-five minutes, open on time. The small-fly program keyed our flies as phorid, not drain — different breeding sites entirely — and the map they left found the source under the ice machine in one visit.
Before you call
Asked by the audit-minded
The five that come up on first calls — usually from whoever owns the binder. Anything else, the lab answers the number below, seven to six.
What exactly is a determination?
A specimen or a monitor catch keyed to species — and where it matters, to strain — with a one-page protocol sheet: biology, breeding sites, the placement map and the re-entry interval. It is the difference between treating German cockroaches and treating "roaches", and in a kitchen that difference is the whole ballgame.
How is 45-minute re-entry possible?
Because nothing is broadcast. Gel sits inside voids and locked stations, biologicals go down drains, regulators sit at the harborage — none of it on a food-contact surface. The log sheet lists every station ID; the health inspector reads it and moves on. Kitchens close at eleven and open at six with the protocol finished in between.
Do you work with our auditor’s schedule?
Yes — audits, insurance surveys and corporate inspections are the calendar the compliance file exists for. The annual file assembles placement logs, safety sheets, monitor trends and corrective actions in the standard format, and a tech will walk the audit with your QA lead if the auditor wants a tour of the grid.
Why monitors instead of monthly treatment?
Because a monitor tells you where to place and when to stop. Calendar treatment does the reverse: product on a schedule, evidence nowhere. The grid is read monthly, placement follows the counts, and the trend chart is what proves to an auditor — and to you — that the program is working instead of merely running.
What if the protocol misses?
The 45-day verification window covers it: activity of the assayed species inside 45 days of a close and the re-run is free, assay to verification. It happens on about 4 percent of files — usually a reintroduction on a delivery — and the trend chart on the re-run shows it plainly, which is rather the point of keeping one.
Determinations inside 24 hours · audit-ready files assembled quarterly · (555) 036-8834 · lab@meridianpest.example
Open an assay
What is being seen, where, and since when — a jarred specimen or a photo of the monitor speeds the determination by a day. The assay is credited against any protocol it starts. lab@meridianpest.example