Revealed: The five towns and an entire city where every restaurant and takeaway avoided food hygiene checks for a year – is where you live in the list?
- Watchdogs are failing to carry out vital food sampling and hygiene checks
- In 2013-14 the Food Standards Agency gave councils £2.2million for testing
- This is while local authority budgets have been halved since 2010
Watchdogs are failing to carry out vital food sampling and hygiene checks in restaurants, takeaways and other outlets, putting the public in danger.
Research found that 33 councils had done no food standards sampling tests over the past year, which means businesses could be getting away with selling meat and other products that are not what they appear.
It also means that the restaurants and other outlets might be selling foods with potentially deadly allergens, such as nuts, without declaring it.
33 councils had done no food standards sampling tests over the past year
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In addition, six of the councils did no food hygiene checks, which means dirty, rat-infested businesses could be selling risky meals with little chance of being caught.
Six councils where all restaurants missed hygiene checks for a year
Blackpool Council
Liverpool City Council
St Helens Council, Merseyside
Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead
Richmond Upon Thames Council, London
Waltham Forest Council, London
The alarming revelations come in an investigation by ITV’s Tonight programme, which suggests that much of Britain no longer has an effective regime for policing food standards and hygiene.
The six councils which did no sampling in the past year were the tourist hotspot of Blackpool, which has 1,500 food outlets, the city of Liverpool, St Helens, Windsor and Maidenhead, Richmond upon Thames, and Waltham Forest.
The national watchdog, the Food Standards Agency, which is responsible for preventing a repeat of the horsemeat scandal of 2013, gave councils no money to fund food sampling in 2017-18.
Yet in 2013-14 the agency gave councils £2.2million for testing in response to revelations that horsemeat was being sold as beef in supermarket burgers and ready meals.
Professor Chris Elliott, who led the official inquiry into the horsemeat scandal, warned that councils do not have the staff to carry out the food inspections needed to protect the public.
In 2013-2014 the Food Standards Agency gave councils £2.2million for testing
Professor Elliott, from Queen’s University, Belfast, said: ‘The lack of funding for environmental health inspectors and trading standards officers is extremely worrying.’
Simon Blackburn, the Local Government Association’s spokesman on food, told the programme: ‘Local authority budgets have essentially been halved since 2010.
‘The number of trading standards officers we employ across the UK is around half of what it was in 2010.’
Mr Blackburn is also council leader in Blackpool, which has more takeaways per head of population than anywhere else in the UK yet failed to carry out any food sampling and hygiene tests last year.
Asked about this, he said the council takes a risk-based approach to food safety and targets outlets it believes may be misleading the public or putting people in danger.
Michael Jackson, of the Food Standards Agency, told the programme that food safety is a top priority for the watchdog.
‘We’re confident that we’re doing a good job, but we’re not complacent, and we’re looking to further improve the system,’ he said.
- ITV Tonight, What’s In Our Meat?, is being shown at 7.30pm today on ITV1.
Ham pizzas that don’t contain pork
Nine out of ten ham and pineapple pizzas bought from independent takeaways in Manchester contained no pork.
Instead the outlets used thinly sliced processed turkey, according to tests by public analyst Dr Duncan Campbell in a survey for ITV’s Tonight programme.
A large number of independent takeaways and pizza shops are run by Muslim businessmen who choose not to serve meat from pigs for religious reasons, but many fail to declare that they use turkey instead.
Dr Campbell said: ‘Does it matter that it’s turkey on your pizza when you asked for ham? Does it matter if there is some horse in your beef lasagne? I think that it matters.’
Manchester City Council, which polices food businesses, said: ‘It is never acceptable for food to be mislabelled and we will take action in cases where this is detected.’
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