106 Enforcement Orders Served
Between 1st January and 31st December 2016 food inspectors served 94 Closure Orders, three Improvement Orders and nine Prohibition Orders on food businesses around the country.
The types of recurring food safety issues which led to Enforcement Orders were:
* poor cleaning and sanitation of premises
* poor personal hygiene
* lack of running water
* inadequate hand-washing facilities
* incorrect food storage
* lack of or ineffective pest-control programmes
* structural problems arising from lack of ongoing maintenance
* lack of or an inadequate food safety management system.
During the month of December 2016 four Closure Orders, one Prohibition Order and two prosecutions were successfully served on Irish food businesses for breaches of food safety legislation, pursuant to the FSAI Act 1998 and the EC (Official Control of Foodstuffs) Regulations 2010. The Enforcement Orders were issued by Environmental Health Officers in the Health Service Executive and by the FSAI.
One Closure Order was served on a Chef Kebab Foodstall at Daltons Pub car park, Fuerty, Roscommon and Auckley Ltd, trading as The Palace public house in Navan, County Meath, was successfully prosecuted by the HSE.
“Enforcements and most especially Closure Orders and Prohibition Orders are never served for minor food safety breaches,” commented FSAI Chief Executive Dr Pamela Byrne in stressing the serious nature of a food business being served an Enforcement Order as reported in the annual figures, “They are served on food businesses only when a serious risk to consumer health has been identified or where there are a number of ongoing breaches of food legislation and that largely tends to relate to serious and grave hygiene or other operational issues.
”Food inspectors are encountering the same issues time-and-time again. The typical reasons why Enforcement Orders have to be served are easily avoidable.”
