HMC food safety officers inspect city eateries

Hyderabad: Following the complaints regarding the food adulteration, unhygienic practices, and quality of food being served at several hotels, restaurants, and food centres in the city, GHMC’s food safety officer initiated field inspections of city eateries to find adulteration and other illegal practices. In view of Ramzan, teams of food safety officers inspected various hotels in the city.

The health-conscious consumers have resorted to lodging complaints against hotels, whose surroundings are completely unhygienic, serving stale food, and sometimes finding dead insects in food items, especially biryani. With such rising complaints, the food safety officers pulled up their socks and initiated field inspections across the city.

According to the food safety wing, the GHMC has appealed to the management of all hotels to take precautionary measures and ensure certain specified standards in preparing food, maintaining hygiene, and strictly following the guidelines that have been issued by the GHMC to take all public safety measures.

Food safety officer Syed Shiraz said that officials tested the food items sold by the eateries, especially the street vendors, and made the street vendors aware of the necessary instructions for maintaining quality and hygiene.

The street vendors were made aware to prepare the food items in a clean environment, and there is no adulteration in the quality.

Moreover, with the ongoing Ramzan festival, the officers conducted an inspection of hotels, restaurants, and roadside haleem vendors. The GHMC has appealed to hoteliers to follow norms as per the Food Safety Standards Act 2006.

They were directed to maintain proper hygiene and take all the precautionary measures while preparing haleem and instructed not to install haleem bhattis (brick and mud ovens used for preparing haleem) on the top floors of the buildings. During the inspection, hoteliers and the management of all hotels were directed to take precautionary measures and ensure certain specified standards for the preparation of haleem.

In addition to ensuring special hygiene arrangements, owners of these hotels and restaurants will be urged to procure meat only through government-approved places to ensure that the meat consumed in hotels is good quality and healthy.

GHMC Mayor Gadwal Vijayalakshmi issued warnings to food safety officials and instructed the officers that food items should be checked and samples should be collected from all eateries, including street foods, hotels, and restaurants. She directed the officials to submit a weekly report of the day-to-day inspections and samples taken by the food safety officials.