With over 12 years dealing with this issue, NZ Detector Dogs have developed specific gate screening processes to target the drug risk for clients who have an interest in food safety – for the products they are producing, their suppliers and their consumers. It is our aim to identify and stop this drug hazard entering a worksite.
Over time the effectiveness of a regular/random gate screening programme with the drug dogs becomes obvious when someone carrying drugs will see our drug dog teams and simply turn around and leave the site. The reason is simple – they do not want to lose their drugs, so they will leave. Often these people are willing to do a drug test, usually confident they will pass, but they are not so willing to walk past a drug dog carrying drugs on their person – and that is where the wheels fall off.
While we try to assist those clients who find themselves in the position of finding drugs in their workplace, covering the whole of NZ it is often logistically impossible for us to attend such incidents at short notice and the delays can be costly.
Our advice to clients who have an interest in food and product safety – put a proactive gate screening programme in place that deters people bringing their drugs onto your site or getting anywhere near your product.
