What action is taken against hotels providing stale food?
12 Jun, 2013In 2012, the Food and Safety Department of Kochi district had conducted raids on various eateries across the district during which many eateries were found to be serving stale and unclean food to the customers. In this regard, an application was filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking to get the details about the actions taken against the owners of the hotels caught in the inspection.
The reply to the application, provided by the Food and Safety Department, has stated that the sample testing of the samples collected from 256 eateries is still under process and as yet no action has been taken against the hotel owners for flouting with the norms.
According to the Food Safety Standards Act, the kitchens of the eateries must be clean and painted white. Also they should have certificates depicting the quality of water used. Though the sources say that many hotels are deliberately undermining the norms due to apathy of the department, the Hotels and Restaurants Association claimed that the eateries are maintaining hygiene.
While Kochi is a small city in the southern part of India where at least such a practice has been detected, the conditions in other cities remains obscure.