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.

Here is an article about the introduction of compulsory display of food hygiene ratings in Wales:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-25119724

One piece of information from this article: “The FSA estimates there are around a million cases of food-borne illness in the UK each year, resulting in 20,000 hospital admissions and contributing to around 500 deaths.”

I have given up eating meat and most dairy products. I am concerned about the processes involved in making margarines, spread substitutes for butter and ‘milks’ like Apro. I know soya should be avoided, it being mostly harvested from reclaimed rain forest land. However they do not tell you how they make the margarines and similar spreads, or milk. Does anyone know about this?

About 3 months ago I found a small piece of plastic in a packet of sultanas I bought at Sainsbury’s. I took it back to customer services at the supermarket where I bought it. They refunded the purchase price and promised that the matter would be investigated and I would hear from them. But I have heard nothing. Over the years I have occasionally found unwanted and I assume potentially hazardous non-food items in packets of food.
Very likely we have all swallowed some of these items when we have not spotted them!

When I was an Environmental Health Officer (EHO) we inspected all premises selling ‘open’ food, ie. butchers, restaurants, delicatessens etc at least 4 times a year and always unannounced. Depending on what we observed we issued verbal warnings or written warnings and if there was a serious breach of regulations we would prosecute. When warnings were issued a follow-up inspection would take place after a week or month depending on what was required and if there was insufficient improvement legal action would follow.
Last week I visited a nearby restaurant and noticed the ‘score-on-the-door’, it was a ‘4’ but I also noticed that the most recent inspection took place over 18 months ago, that score was therefor meaningless and irrelevant.
I worked for one of the worst Authorities found in your survey and know that the number of EHOs has reduced quite drastically since I retired with a consequent reduction in the number and quality of inspections carried out. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions but would say that ‘scores-on-the-doors’ are not the answer to poor hygiene in restaurants.

Roger suggests that anyone with a rating of ONE or less should warrant a closure order. Surely it should be two or even three – these premises are a risk to everyone who eats there or has takeaways from them. Maybe it should be an instant closure. I have seen on television indications that very poor results have not been followed up and only a re-visit made after a year when very little has changed, which makes the original inspection a waste of time. Is this not a matter for a campaign?

This, thankfully, happened many years ago, though diners should still be on their guard. It was a popular, mid-range restaurant in Stoke Newington, London, where I ordered fish and chips. Halfway through my meal, I uncovered fragments of pastry among the chips! As I poked around, more pastry crumbs appeared. It became apparent to me that a previous customer who had ordered maybe pie and chips had left most of his chips, which had then been scraped onto my plate and served as fresh. When I called the waitress over to complain, she went to fetch the manager. However, instead of the manager, the chef appeared, extremely irate with a half-smoked cigarette hanging from his lower lip, waving his arms about and in pidgin English, loudly accusing me of being ‘effing troublemaker! Sometimes, getting out with life and limb intact may be preferable to the moral satisfaction of making a complaint, however legitimate!

Most of the comments relate to food hygiene in food outlets, which is important, but there seems to be little about fresh food packaged elsewhere. There seems to be little knowledge that the Food Standards Agency (FSA) recognises the potential health hazard in pre-packed fresh salad materials and advise that some packers sterilise the leaves before packing and some don’t; apparently this is a voluntary arrangement, so your “freshly washed salad” could actually harbour a significant level of pathogens which can do harm to vulnerable people such as the young and the old, depending on the packer and how long it has been on the shelf. I have suffered most of my life from a sensitivity to unsterilised pre-packed salads and I know of many other people who also have this problem. At home we follow the FSA advice and sterilise the leaves in Sodium metabisulphite solution (for sterilising baby feeding and wine bottles) for 15 minutes which solves the problem. If I buy a pre-packed sandwich which contains salad, invariably this leads to a mild gastro upset, for the same reasons.

Considering the many people that suffer from this problem and how it can be quite harmful to the young and old, I have suggested several times to Which that they investigate the health safety of pre-packed fresh foods that are not cooked, but so far this has not happened. Do any of you experience the same problem?