Food Hygiene Inspection

Food Hygiene, otherwise known as Food Safety can be defined as handling, preparing and storing food or drink in a way that best reduces the risk of consumers becoming sick from the food-borne disease. The principles of food safety aim to prevent food from becoming contaminated and causing food poisoning. Food safety inspections are a key health protection measure applied by governments to prevent foodborne illness, yet they remain the subject of sustained criticism. These criticisms include inconsistency and inadequacy of methods applied to inspection, and ineffectiveness in preventing foodborne illness. Investigating the validity of these criticisms represent important areas for further research. However, a defined construct around the meaning’s society attributes to food safety inspection must first be established.

Through critical examination of available literature, this review identified meanings attributed to food safety inspection and explicates some of the key elements that compose food safety inspection as a social construct. A total of 18 meanings were found to be attributed to food safety inspection. Variation in meanings were found between consumers, food business associates and food safety inspectors. For some, inspection meant a source of assurance, for others a threat to fairness, while most view inspection as a product of resources and inspector training. The meanings were then examined in light of common criticisms directed at food safety inspection, to expound their influence in how food safety inspection is realized, shaped, and rationalized. This review highlights the influence of sociological factors in defining food safety inspection

Food hygiene standards are vital for monitoring the health and safety practices of most retail organisations and have uses beyond restaurants, including supermarkets, fast food chains and bars & clubs. Though only restaurants are required to publicly display their hygiene ratings, the pandemic has driven more and more consumers to pay attention to the hygiene standards of the venues they go to. As we progress through the pandemic and beyond, businesses will need to improve their cleaning inspection processes to ensure they are protecting their customers and demonstrating to them that their health is of the utmost importance.