Complaints on the rise over grubby food

EVERY day life is full of risk. When we get on a bus we trust the bus driver. When we get on a plane we must believe that the pilot hasn’t spent the hours before takeoff assessing the sharpness of the martinis in an airport lounge. When we buy a meal in a restaurant or a takeaway we trust that the standards needed to produce safe food, to prevent contamination or illness are routine.

However, a 17% increase in the number of complaints — up to 2,739 — made to the Food Safety Authority last year suggest that all is not well in the commercial kitchens of Ireland. Complaints around food poisoning jumped 45%, complaints related to poor hygiene were up 34%, while the number of complaints about unfit food was up 7% on the previous year.

These figures are unacceptable and are probably just the tip of the iceberg as most of us are culturally reluctant to complain. It is unfortunate too that this indifference was found in a sector supported by preferential treatment on taxes so the sector might grow and support more jobs.