We spoke to Bobby Krishna, Food Inspector with Dubai Municipality. Finding an insect in your sandwich isn't the only scary signal! A kitchen could be seemingly dirty...but can make absolutely safe food. It's very important to have your food cooked at the right temperature. So, it's more worrying to eat your coleslaw than your fried chicken!
The Dubai Municipality number to report cases is 800-900. Their website is http://www.dm.gov.ae/ but they encourage the public to meet them at the Food Safety Unit and talk in person and be more informed. And according to Bobby, learn more at http://www.fightback.org/
Rough statistics show that Dubai has around 12,000 active food establishments; 480 are hotels and about 2,800 are restaurants/cafeterias. There are around 130 food inspectors who have a constant eye on food places. They receive around 5 complains everyday that are handled promptly.
Should we name and shame them? Is it our right as a consumer to know what cafeterias/hotels have sold infected foods?
Dubai Municipality is also launching their food safety campaign in a few weeks. Lookout for leaflets and flyers in your local supermarket and public places to learn more about food safety and hygiene.
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3 comments:
Dear Fatma,
I agree with your point that there is nothing more disgusting that an insect or a hair in the food.
But, from a food saftey perspective, these are physical contaminants that are visible to our eyes and the danger of eating can be avoided by throwing the food away.
Foodborne illnesses are defined as diseases, usually either infectious or toxic in nature, caused by biological, chemical or physical agents that enter the body through the of food. The global incidence of foodborne disease is difficult to estimate, but it has been reported that in 2005 alone 1.8 million people died from diarrhoeal diseases worldwide. A great proportion of these cases can be attributed to contamination of food and drinking water. Additionally, diarrhoea is a major cause of malnutrition in infants and young children.
In industrialized countries, the percentage of the population suffering from foodborne diseases each year has been reported to be up to 30%. In the United States of America (USA), for example, around 76 million cases of foodborne diseases, resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths, are estimated to occur each year.
While less well documented, developing countries bear the brunt of the problem due to the presence of a wide range of foodborne diseases, including those caused by bacteria, viruses and parasites.
Foodborne disease outbreaks may take on massive proportions. For example, in 1994, an outbreak of salmonellosis due to contaminated ice cream occurred in the USA, affecting an estimated 224,000 persons. In 1988, an outbreak of hepatitis A, resulting from the consumption of contaminated clams, affected some 300,000 individuals in China.
The icecream that the people consumed would have looked perfectly alright because the bacteria is not visible to human eyes.
As food in Dubai comes from different parts of the world, these are the kind of problems we are worried about . We need control at all points; at the ports, at shops and at home.
Fair amount of control can be achieved through proper cooking and good hygiene practices.
No one is free from the responsibility of ensuring food safety, whether it be the company that imports wheat, or the company that makes the sandwich, or the shops that sells the sandwich, or the custome who takes it home. Things can go wrong at any stage.
Dubai Municipality aims to improve knwoeldge at all the above levels to ensure that safe food is availbale to public.
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