Food hygiene breakthrough - lights on in Blacktown

The Blacktown Advocate has published this story "Hygiene Offenders" based on documents released under Freedom of Information by Blacktown City Council, concerning fines imposed for failure to observe health food standards.

The Sydney Morning Herald has been pursuing this issue with City of Sydney Council, without success so far. (Update - here "Finally, food hygiene fines in the open" is the SMH 28 February article following up the Blacktown story).

We have written a number of times about why publication of information about compliance with food standards is an important public health issue. It's common place for such information to be available to members of the public, sometimes through an official ratings system as in the UK (Scores on Doors), and in many states in the US and in Canada.

Perhaps both our major NSW political parties, in full election mode, should be asked whether, if elected, they will take action to ensure that information about food handling and compliance with standards is publicly available on a state wide basis.

In the meantime let's all support restaurants in Blacktown knowing that major breaches of standards are likely to be in the public domain. As for the rest of the restaurants and other businesses that handle our food in NSW - we're still in the dark about their record.