245 tons of unfit food destroyed
The Products Monitoring Section of the Food Control Department in Dubai Municipality has launched extensive and rigorous inspection campaigns in the foodstuff markets with the arrival of the summer season, which witnesses high temperature that leads to easy damage of food items and becoming unfit for human consumption, whether it is meat, fish, vegetables or fruits.
Sultan Ali Tahir, Head of Products Monitoring Section said that the food inspectors in the Section are already in the market following up daily with the food outlets, supermarkets, meat and fish shops to make sure they meet the hygiene requirements, validity of food and compliance to standards.
"The inspectors are taking all legal actions against abusers of the rules and regulations of the municipality," he said.
He said that the campaign included daily inspection programmes for the shops at the fish markets in Deira, Shindagha and Karama, where 554 establishments were visited that included all the fish, meat, vegetable and fruit stalls, and shops selling foodstuffs.
"We focused on the maintenance of shops and the removal of old equipment such as shelves, platforms and replacing them with new ones. We also checked the health cards of the employees, and followed up the fish offered for sale at the stalls and confiscated the rotten ones and checked whether sufficient quantities ice were put over the fish supply. We prevented the display of fish outside the shops in the Karama market, as well as prevented the display of fish in old cork boxes and asked to replace them with new plastic boxes. We also checked the cleanliness of the stalls for dried fish and its packaging to prevent access and the proliferation of insects. We also followed up vegetables and fruits and confiscated the damaged. In addition to that we followed up the meat displayed in the meat stalls to ensure its safety, and checked the shops as well as storage areas to see whether hygiene rules are followed," said Tahir.
The campaign resulted in destroying 245 kilograms of rotten vegetables and fruits. Some vegetables and fruits contaminated with pesticide were also destroyed as well.
He added that the inspection team monitored several irregularities such as non-compliance with the hygiene rules and workers not keeping clean and working with expired health cards. Some food items that were defective have been confiscated and destroyed immediately. Poor storage and display of some of the food items in the hot sun at this time of the year as well as some wrong practices of the workers were also detected.
