Hyderabad: Several restaurants have been found lacking in basic hygiene and using substandard raw materials such as spices, oil, vegetables among others for producing their eatables, data released by GHMC’s food safety wing revealed.In the last 11 months, GHMC food inspectors have conducted 4,500 inspections and collected 3,340 food samples. Of this, the officials filed cases against 56 food outlets and imposed penalties worth Rs 66 lakh. The erring food outlets include budget hotels, street food stalls, bakeries, irani cafes, sweet shops and even premium hotels, pubs and bars. The inspections revealed unhygienic kitchens, stale and unstamped meat, flies on food and eatables being stored at unclean places. They found that the staff — cooks and servers — were not wearing safety gear. They also found cockroaches in fridges, onions being stored near the sink, and vegetables being dumped at dirty parking lots owing to space crunch. “Meat should be stored as per norms. It should only be procured from notified slaughter houses. The stamp of GHMC is a guarantee that the animal, which was slaughtered, was not sick or had any disease. But at many places, the meat was not stamped,” said a GHMC official from the food safety wing. According to the officials, there were instances of some food outlets using coloured oil. Some were reusing oil again and again, which was not healthy. At many places, the shell life of the packaged food at bakeries was not mentioned. “Neither did the package have a manufacturing date nor the shell life,” said another official from GHMC Food Safety wing. Common violations HYGIENE ISSUES Unhygienic kitchens Cockroaches in fridges Dustbins were kept open House fly infestation Littering of leftover food on floors Food handlers without hairnets Health records of food handlers and water analysis reports not maintained QUALITY ISSUES Stale meat, Inferior quality raw material including oil and spices Poor quality vegetables Shell life of food products not displayed
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