My day as a food hygiene inspector

I am coming round to the view that it should mandatory in England for the current food hygiene ratings for each establishment to be displayed on the outside together with the date of certification and the address & telephone number of the responsible authority. But I question whether it is helpful to have five grades of rating. I would suggest something along the lines of :

A. Fully Compliant in all respects [Certificate Issued]
B. Food Hygiene Standards Compliant but Record Keeping Requires Improvement
C. Food Hygiene Standards NOT Compliant [Enforcement Action]

A re-inspection one month later could result in a regrading.

Echoing something Malcolm R has said in a related conversation, I think the whole inspection and enforcement regime should be funded from an annual licence fee. In return for that revenue I think the responsible local authorities should be rquired to make an annual inspection of each premises within fifteen months of the previous one and without prior warning, and should publish its inspection reports, recommendations and ratings on its own website.

I noticed today, purely coincidentally, that a slaughterhouse owner has been fined £8,000, plus legal costs, for selling 55 horses from his abattoirand accepting 17 animals without keeping proper records. This was the first prosecution for criminal charges relating to the 2013 horsemeat scandal and some of the meat went to Italian restaurants. There was a further payment order of more than £10,442 in costs for breaching EU regulations. Sentencing, the Judge said: “The traceability of food products, here meat, is of critical importance in relation to public health. If meat causes ill health then it is important that those responsible for investigating the cause of it should quickly be able to discover where the meat came from and trace it backwards and backwards and backwards to find where the problem lies and prevent the problem escalating.” While this case relates to the input side of the catering trade, it is just as important for restaurants and take-aways at the output end of the supply chain to also maintain reliable records. In a previous Conversation on this topic, an award-winning restaurateur argued that there was too much attention paid to the paperwork side of restaurant inspection and not enough to the functional aspects. I think both elements need to be given full consideration. There would be no excuse for skimped inspections if councils were remunerated for them from the annual licence fee [and as an added point, re-inspections due to non-compliance could also carry an additional charge].

I entirely agree. I think a serious breach of health or safety standards should give rise to an instant closure. I would include anything potentially able to cause harm or illness to a customer or personnel, the storage of any food or ingredients at the wrong temperature, or in an unsafe manner, or beyond the safe period, any form of potential contamination arising from the condition of the premises and the sanitary arrangements, and the presence of insects or any verminous infestation of the premises. An unanswered concern of mine from the previous Conversation was how places that have the lowest ratings can be allowed to remain open at all; in the absence of any publicly-displayed notice to that effect the public would have no way of knowing that they could be at risk, and for a public authority to leave people in such ignorance is not acceptable in my view. In the interests of the premises that are fully compliant and are struggling to survive in the face of unfair competition, as well as the over-riding need to safeguard public health and safety, the unfit establishments have to be shut down until they have put things right.

Generalising from a single anecdote comes with risks but your publisher will no doubt take care of that. With any franchised operation there are going to be variations across the range. You don’t say whether the inspection at the Victoria MacDonalds was an internal company inspection [which might well have been telegraphed in advance, or due on a calendar rota] or was a local authority hygiene inspection.

If, in an attempt to raise standards and as a matter of official policy, local authorities do give advance notice of an inspection, I would expect them to be totally unforgiving in terms of compliance – so the overall purpose of the food safety and hygiene regime will have been served. They should also ensure there is no slip-back during the post-inspection period. But going back to what I said previously, for a council officer to tip off a trader about a forthcoming inspection in return for monetary or other gain would put them at risk of being reported or of potential blackmail, the likelhood of prosecution or at the least dismissal, the end of their career in public service, the possible loss of their pension, and a possible prison sentence. The “price” for that would be very high which is why it doesn’t happen.

I agree with your statement that in the UK the council hygiene inspectors do their jobs properly . Our problem is that (a) because of cuts they don’t do it frequently enough given that premises are always changing hands, (b) they are not rigorous enough at the lower end of the scale and should get an order to close places that are putting the public’s or staff’s health and safety at risk, (c) the system does not have enough incentives to reach for the stars, and (d) there is no requirement to publish the reports or to display the star ratings on the premises.

In another Conversation, Ian informed us that in 1997, the Government agreed to Which?’s demand for an independent Food Standards Agency.

I do wish that Which? would tackle the less demanding task of pushing Government to require all premises to display food hygiene ratings on their premises and websites. On second thoughts, it would be better to provide a link to the rating on the FSA website because I had to complain about an incorrect rating on the website of an Indian restaurant.