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82
SECTION E
Inspection of Food and Supervision of Food Premises
During the past two or three decades much has been done by
Public Health Departments to raise the standard of hygiene
throughout the country, but it is obvious that hygiene is now rapidly
becoming more of an individual responsibility and this is especially
so with regard to food.
Even in the most up-to-date and hygienic food factory one
ignorant, careless or apathetic employee can jeopardise the health
of hundreds of people. All the efforts of the Food Inspectors, i.e.
the insistence on the most suitable premises, the supply of adequate
and efficient equipment and the instruction concerning the most
effective and hygienic practices, can all be brought to nought by
irresponsible individuals.
Contamination, however, is by no means confined to the worker
in the catering industry—it can be perpetrated by the market man,
the delivery man and even the customer, and it will be apparent from
these few observations that responsibilities of the Food Inspector
are not only onerous but wide and varied and demand great
persuasive persistence and singleness of purpose.
With the staff of the food section fully restored, the systematic
inspection of food and the supervision of food premises continued
at a high level during the year, and the new L.C.C. Food Byelaws
introduced on 3rd November will doubtless give valuable assistance
in the drive for more hygienic catering.
These byelaws, based on the Ministry of Food's Model Byelaws
of 1949, were made under Section 15 of the Food and Drugs Act,
1938, " to secure the observance of sanitary and cleanly conditions
and practices in connection with the handling, wrapping and delivery
of food sold or intended for sale for human consumption and in
connection with the sale or exposure for sale in the open air of food
intended for human consumption."
A copy of these byelaws was forwarded to the occupiers of all
premises concerned with the sale, storage for sale or handling of
any food commodity.