The closure of yet another restaurant in the Kingdom after a customer found a worm in a pre-packaged salad last week in Riyadh, shows how much the inspections of restaurants and their kitchens need to be increased to protect the health of the public.
Just a few weeks ago a customer in Jeddah filmed what looked like a mouse nibbling away at food in an open salad bar at a famous fish and chips restaurant in a shopping mall. The video was posted online and went viral. It was picked up by news outlets around the globe, with all noting that health inspectors had promptly shut down the restaurant and fined the owners.
While such news incidents do tend to sensationalize such events, making many people believe that there is an avalanche of rats, cockroaches and worms running willy-nilly through our food in restaurants, both high and low brow, the truth is much more mundane.
The Internet unfortunately serves to amplify and quickly spread rumors of food contaminations and mishaps. A recent one involved a customer in the United States who bought fried chicken and posted a picture of one of the pieces that looked like a deep-fried mouse. People were horrified and disgusted, but after sending off the offending piece to a laboratory for testing it was discovered that it was just plain old chicken after all that happened to look like a mouse because of its shape and bread-crumb coating.
But honestly, no one likes to see a mouse nibbling at a salad bar that you’ve just eaten from or are about to eat from. And although worms may be the natural insects to be found eating lettuce leaves, it is gross and disgusting to find one in your salad! The solution is to have increased inspections of restaurants by health inspectors in all Saudi cities, both scheduled and surprise ones. A rating system of eating establishments — such as they do in many cities around the world according to their cleanliness and with the resulting grade prominently displayed at the entrance — would also be helpful in guiding consumers to cleaner restaurants and hopefully embarrass the owners of establishments with low marks into improving their cleanliness.
With our extremely high temperatures in the Kingdom during the summer, the proper storage and refrigeration of foods is also of utmost importance. The number of food poisoning cases in Saudi Arabia is extremely high because of food being handled incorrectly and not being stored at the correct temperature. This causes food to spoil very quickly, poisoning unsuspecting customers who often end up in hospital if the case is severe enough.
It is good to know that health departments have emergency numbers that the public can use to denounce food contamination in restaurants or supermarkets. All of us should be vigilant about this and promptly report any sightings of rodents or insects infesting our food supply. Health authorities should increase their inspections and communicate their findings to the public regularly. That way the public would rest easier knowing that the government is doing everything possible to protect its health.
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The writer is a Saudi journalist based in Brazil.
