Dubai supermarkets start direct food safety messaging at deli counters
Dubai is hot, with daytime highs at this time of year regularly exceeding 40C (104 F). Local public health types determined that with the super shopping mega malls, people were buying food, placing it in the incubators they called cars, and then some more leisurely shopping.
So, after a few meetings, all supermarkets in Dubai will now be offering warnings, similar to these, regarding ready-to-eat foods. The sign says, 'Cold Food Consume Immediately Or Refrigerate Within One Hour.'
Cool stuff.
Stickers for takeaway food a hit in Dubai
Food such as takeout or takeaway, that is initially prepared in a restaurant but is consumed in an individual’s home, may be a venue to target with safe-food handling messages. Earlier this decade, both Chicago-based Francesca Restaurants and Boston-based Buca Di Beppo Restaurants reported anecdotal success placing food safety labels on containers of takeout food.
In 2004, my group undertook research to:
• examine restaurant managements’ experience of using a safe food-handling label on takeout food;
• explore managements’ food safety concerns;
• determine the value of consumer safe-food handling labels to managers;
• establish perceived label effectiveness; and,
• identify challenges with implementation.
For our study, we defined take-out as food procured from a casual dining restaurant (i.e. sit-down restaurant) but eaten elsewhere, including food ordered as take-out and leftover food packaged to be taken home. The label we developed is right (above) and left (note, the phone line and web site don’t work anymore).
The research paper describing that work has been accepted by a peer-reviewed scientific journal and will be published in the near future.
However, the public health types in Dubai discovered over the weekend the same thing we found: most consumers and restaurateurs like the idea.
Our bites.ksu.edu Dubai correspondent contacted Ben and me about stickers on takeaway, and we sent along what we had developed. Today, the Khaleej Times reports,
The Dubai Municipality is planning to encourage all restaurants in the emirate to issue advisories to consumers on safe handling of takeaway food.
The decision follows a similar initiative by a popular south Indian restaurant group that attaches red stickers to its takeaway bags at its two outlets in Dubai. A municipality official applauded the group’s move and said the civic body intended to support such initiatives by other restaurants as well.
Director of Food Control Department, Khalid Mohammed Sherif, told the Khaleej Times,
“We are encouraging more and more food outlets to put such messages along with takeaway food to ensure that the customer handles the food properly. We will be providing all of them with modified instructions for customers to handle food taken away.”
He said the modified versions of the advisories will include the temperature at which food items have to be stored and the duration within which they have to be consumed, depending on the types of ingredients.
Below is a draft of the information intended for consumers.
Dubai restaurant requires signed disclaimer with purchase
What a cop-out.
After the tragic death of Nathan, 5, and his sister, Chelsea, 7, in connection with home-delivered Chinese food in June, the importance of food safety should have come into sharp focus for restaurateurs in Dubai.
On the off-chance that restaurant owners didn’t catch the news, the Dubai Municipality stepped up restaurant inspections and conducted a food safety awareness campaign under the banner "Food Safety is our Priority."
Establishments like Kempinski Hotel in Mall of the Emirates were given the opportunity to demonstrate to customers that food safety was indeed a priority.
Instead, as Gulf News reports,
“Hotel Kempinski in Mall of the Emirates is getting its customers to sign a disclaimer note stating that its restaurants would not be responsible for the quality of food once it is taken out of their premises.”
The disclaimer reads,
"Please note that the Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates takes no responsibility whatsoever for any food or beverage bought from the hotel or any outlets of the hotel for personal consumption.
"This is due to the fact that the Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates has no more control or any way of ascertaining the safety and hygienic condition of this food and beverage once outside the premises. Please sign the waiver below to indicate your acceptance of the terms stipulated.
"Otherwise the hotel is unable to permit any food or beverage to be purchased."
The establishment’s haughty and self-serving culture is absolutely disgusting and leaves me with very little faith in the safety of its food.
Another outlet, Calicut Paragon in Karama, invested their resources in stickers for take-out bags that advise consumers to eat their food within two hours of purchase—a step that suggests a shared responsibility for the safety of food and that I find a little more palatable.
I agree with this guy:
"I think it is completely unethical to make customers sign disclaimers like that. It is good to safeguard the business, but not at the cost of displeasing customers," said Ronald D'Souza, operations manager at Sofra Worldwide - a firm that owns restaurant chains like Gelato, NaanPlus and Uno Chicago Grill.
"From your side, you have to ensure that quality and hygiene standards are maintained at the highest levels. But as we are in the business of food, there is an element of risk that you must take," D'Souza said.
Kempinski Hotel should step up to the plate and recognize that selling microbiologically safe food is a good way to protect your business, and showing a commitment to food safety is a good way to promote it.
Letter grades for Abu Dhabi restaurants?
If the UAE takes letter grades for restaurant inspection disclosure, will they also take American pop culture crap like The Hills (right).
The National reports that more than half of all restaurants monitored by Sharjah Municipality have failed basic food hygiene inspections on such grounds as out-of-date food and mouldy kitchens.
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Over the past 12 months, inspectors checked 1,588 restaurants and cafeterias, of which only 223 met the minimum requirements, according to Jassim Mohammed al Ali, head of the municipality’s internal inspection department.
Of the remaining establishments, 891 were issued with warnings and 474 were closed temporarily until they improved.
Restaurants and grocery shops in the capital will face similar inspections over the coming weeks.
The news comes a week after a four-year-old girl died from food poisoning in Sharjah. Marwa Faisal died in Al Qassimi Hospital early last Sunday, just 55 minutes after she, her parents and her brother had been admitted with symptoms that included violent vomiting. …
The Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority has warned grocery shop operators and restaurant managers in the emirate a concerted food inspection campaign is on the way in the lead-up to the summer.
Last month in Al Ain, spot checks by ADFCA inspectors and city police found 143 lorries hauling produce to markets and restaurants without proper permits. …
The ADFCA is also considering implementing a restaurants grading system similar to that implemented in 2006 for fish markets and butcher shops.
Under the proposed programme, all the emirate’s food outlets would be required clearly to display a certificate disclosing health inspection results –“A” for exceptional health and safety practices, “B” for very good, or a passing “C” grade.
Want a rare burger in Dubai? Sign for it
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“We just want to make sure that we serve the best quality food and the safest. And so if it’s rare, obviously there are factors that will contribute to how safe the food is.”Levent Tekun, the director of marketing at Shangri-La Hotel in Abu Dhabi, said it is a worldwide policy for the hotel chain.
“As a company, globally, when a burger is ordered and a guest is asking for it to be medium or rare or something along those lines, our verbal phrase on that would be that the hotel prefers for the burgers to be well-done. Then it’s down to the guest to choose whether he wants it well-done or rare or whatever.”
In both Abu Dhabi and Dubai, customers who ask to take prepared food away from the hotel premises or use hotel facilities to store food from outside must sign a disclaimer. That practice is used in other hotel restaurants in the UAE, such as the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
It’s all part of the Shangri-La Hotel’s HACCP plan and has been in place for several years. But I wonder, how are rare and medium defined? Are they using meat thermometers and the right ones?
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