How safe is your food?

I stopped eating meat back-end of last year. I even had a Quorn xmas dinner. Not sure if it’s anything to-do with the horsemeat or not. I just found it hard to carry on eating animals.

Bella my baby girl still eats meat. But she has too 🙂

I don’t think I have ever seen a food hygiene rating below 3 displayed at any premises. I do check before eating out and encourage friends to do the same. Those establishments with a poor rating should have to pay for reinspection.

If it is mandatory to display food hygiene ratings in Wales, then why not in the rest of the UK?

One of the problems with the hygiene ratings is that some councils are seriously behind in their inspection programme and the “scores on the doors” can be misleading about the current standard of hygiene. A 3 rating might have been compliant at the time of the inspection, indeed it might well have been borderline because the inspectors gave some words of encouragement for better practice and the proprietor promised to take them on board, but standards might have slipped between then and now. I refuse to go anywhere with a score lower than four and if the rating is not displayed then I assume the establishment is not satisfactory. I am not sure how easy it is for a conscientious restaurateur to have a re-inspection carried out to recognise improvements made since the previous inspection; equally, do councils look out for, or react to concerns about, a decline in standards at an establishment or does it carry on until the next programmed inspection? I assume that local authorities prioritise their inspections so that scrutiny is focussed to where it is most critical, but they need to be up-to-date and even-handed overall because some of the reputable national chains which generally have good scores need to be kept up to the mark at a local level. Ideally, no more than thirteen months should pass between inspections and the ratings notices on the premises should be updated following every inspection. A large font over-print of the month/year, or a distinctive coloured bar across the notice would help.

I am glad you have looked at the performance of the local authorities and highlighted the best and worst performers. The sure way to raise standards in food establishments is to have a thorough inspection and enforecement regime and those councils that are delinquent in this need to be hauled over the coals because they are failing in their statutory duty of public protection. This is more important than distributing free newsletters to residents, putting up Christmas lights, and having an annual mayoral banquet [don’t go there – poor hygiene!]. With eating-out on a knife-edge due to the recession, and the high turnover of catering staff and over-reliance on casual labour, it is vital that proper food safety inspections are carried out efficiently and regularly. One thing this system does allow for is the role of the local authority to be examined in the event of a food poisoning or contamination incident; unfortunately, the local council is probably the prosecuting authority and will obviously not put its own lethargy up as Exhibit B. Maybe the Food Standards Agency should have an over-riding power to take action against an authority that has been negligent in maintaining standards.