Posted: July 30th, 2008 - 5:28pm by Doug Powell

Amy and I spent a week in Melbourne in July. We ate out a lot. And it was simply dining on faith.

As Jason Dowling reports in Melbourne’s daily paper, The Age,

Dozens of city food businesses, including restaurants and cafes, have been prosecuted for breaching food hygiene laws in the past five years — but Melbourne City Council will not reveal who they are. …

The council's inability to name restaurants with poor hygiene records comes as a "name and shame" food hygiene website in New South Wales had attracted 25,000 visitors in its first month.

The NSW Government has boasted the new website improved consumer information and "provides a powerful incentive for the food industry to boost its performance".

Melbourne City Councillor David Wilson was cited as saying the council did not support wider disclosure of poor hygiene discoveries at restaurants, adding,

"We believe that it is not appropriate for details of prosecutions to be released as restaurants may have changed management since the prosecution or they may not have breached food safety regulations since the initial prosecution and publication of a past prosecution could severely impact the viability of the current business.”

Councillor Wilson, I bet you won’t have the vote of my friend, Melbourne Milton (left, exactly as shown) next election. Milton wants to see the results of restaurant inspections and is so astute he said he knew the results didn't really meant anything, didn’t make the food any safer and were just a snapshot in time, but the public disclosure made people more aware of food safety issues and people talked about it.

Even Durham Region in Ontario, Canada, is going to start with the red, yellow, green system of restaurant inspection disclosure.

Melbourne, figure it out. People who spend money in your restaurants should have access to inspection data if they want. Or they should take their money elsewhere.

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