York County, VA Public Health Rules: Rodent Control (2026)

Section 12-37 of the York County Code requires every restaurant to have all openings to the outer air effectively screened, with self-closing, outward-opening doors unless another method keeps flies out, and it lets an operator run an electric fan over an entrance instead. The same section adds a flat command: whatever methods a restaurant uses for flies, vermin and rodents have to actually work, at all restaurants in the county, with no minimum-square-footage or headcount exemption. This sits inside Division 2, 'Minimum Standards of Operation,' which Section 12-27 says every restaurant in the county must meet to operate at all.

The county health officer enforces Chapter 12 under Section 12-2, and Section 12-17 ties enforcement to the restaurant's operating permit: an unrevoked permit is required to run a restaurant in York County, and the health officer can revoke that permit if the restaurant, owner, operator, manager or any employee violates any provision of the chapter, including the rodent-and-vermin-control rule. Once revoked, the sheriff is notified in writing and closes and padlocks the restaurant until the violation is corrected and the health officer reinstates the permit.

Restaurants are also subject to inspection as often as the health officer deems necessary under Section 12-18. York County has no separate, general property-maintenance rodent-control ordinance outside the food-service chapter; the operative rule is written specifically into restaurant sanitation standards, so it reaches food establishments rather than residential or commercial property generally.