Efficiency of new food hygiene measures criticised
Just a month before a new food hygiene scheme is to be launched in Wales, a consumer watchdog has heavily criticised its effectiveness and whether it will actually work.
The scheme involves environmental health inspectors assigning food retailers - every business from supermarkets and takeaways to pubs, restaurants and hotels - a hygiene rating or score from 0 to 5 (0 being the most unsafe premises requiring immediate improvement and 5 being the ones with the highest standards).
This scheme, set to be put in place from October 1st, is designed to combat the risk of another E.coli 0157 outbreak like the catastrophe in 2005 where hundreds of people were hospitalised and a five-year-old boy died.
However, Consumer Focus Wales has questioned the effectiveness of the new hygiene rating scheme. Food job experts at the watchdog have expressed concern that the detailed results of the inspectors' findings will not be made fully available to the public, and that retailers will not be forced to display their assigned rating on their premises.
The only option for concerned consumers is to request hygiene records via the Freedom of Information Act, or to access hygiene ratings on a compiled website.
One final problem with the scheme is that wholesale businesses like the Welsh butchers shop which was the cause of the 2005 food poisoning outbreak will not be given a rating, as they don't supply the public directly.
The scheme involves environmental health inspectors assigning food retailers - every business from supermarkets and takeaways to pubs, restaurants and hotels - a hygiene rating or score from 0 to 5 (0 being the most unsafe premises requiring immediate improvement and 5 being the ones with the highest standards).
This scheme, set to be put in place from October 1st, is designed to combat the risk of another E.coli 0157 outbreak like the catastrophe in 2005 where hundreds of people were hospitalised and a five-year-old boy died.
However, Consumer Focus Wales has questioned the effectiveness of the new hygiene rating scheme. Food job experts at the watchdog have expressed concern that the detailed results of the inspectors' findings will not be made fully available to the public, and that retailers will not be forced to display their assigned rating on their premises.
The only option for concerned consumers is to request hygiene records via the Freedom of Information Act, or to access hygiene ratings on a compiled website.
One final problem with the scheme is that wholesale businesses like the Welsh butchers shop which was the cause of the 2005 food poisoning outbreak will not be given a rating, as they don't supply the public directly.
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