Lid blown on hidden food safety breaches

EASTERN suburbs diners can now find out if their local restaurant has a cockroach plague or stores chicken at room temperature following a council's decision to release copies of its food safety fines.

Woollahra Municipal Council's landmark decision to release infringement notices to the Herald reveals a host of food offences including an instance of the BP service station in Vernon Street, Woollahra, storing chicken cooked the previous day at 13.5 degrees.

"That's a potential killer. There's no better medium for bacteria growth than cooked chicken," said the former chief food inspector with the NSW Health Department, Des Sibraa.

BP received Woollahra's highest fine of $1320 for "handling food for sale to the public in an unsafe manner". BP's spokesman, Jamie Jardine, said the company regretted the "isolated incident where the store did not follow our procedures for food preparation". The company has stopped preparing food in all its 1400 service stations across the country, he said.

Documents released by Woollahra Council reveal officers imposed 10 fines on restaurants and other food businesses in 2005 and last year. Two were imposed on the Cosmopolitan Terrace Cafe, a Double Bay institution, whose owners were each fined $330 on November 14 last year.

The council's health inspector, Tonya Lego, said the premises were in "an unsanitary and unclean condition, 1) failed to keep fixtures and fittings free of grease dirt and other material, 2) failed to keep premises free of vermin, live German roaches observed." Ms Lego issued the fines seven weeks after the council had issued, in September, an improvement notice to the restaurant,

One of the owners, Yanina Katslan, said it was the first and only time her restaurant had been fined in nearly five years she had owned the business and that all issues had been rectified.

"When there were things to be complied with we did it straight away," Ms Katslan said. "We fixed the floor, fixed the light fittings … In a huge restaurant like that there could always be a problem."

Ms Katslan said the pest company came monthly to control the cockroaches but there were always cockroaches in an old building. She was moving to new premises in two months, she said.

Mr Sibraa agreed that cockroaches were almost impossible to control. "I feel sorry for people with German cockroaches because there is practically no way you can keep them out," he said. "But on the other hand you can't let the cockroaches take over.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald


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