5th raid in month reveals more stale food

Stale food that was seized from restaurants in Alappuzha town on Wednesday.

Restaurants in the town were raided for the fifth time in a month on Wednesday. The previous raids were found to have had little effect with authorities finding stale food from eateries yet again.

Raids were conducted by the health wing of the Alappuzha municipality in 15 restaurants; stale items were seized from most of them. These include outlets situated at the Alappuzha beach, near the Alappuzha railway station and Vellakinar. The items seized included rice, fish curry, chicken and vegetable dishes, and stale oil with many of them found to be many weeks old.

Health Inspectors K.N. Harish, Junior Health Inspectors P. Sandesh, Sumesh Pavithran and C. Ajayakumar were among those who led the raids. According to officials, selling stale food could attract fines up to Rs. 25,000 and also suspension of the particular restaurant’s license.

However, criticisms have been raised from various quarters that letting errant restaurant owners go with light punishments have led to many having scant regard for flouting basic food and hygienestandards set by the Food Safety and Standards Act.

There is growing call to impose stringent actions against those found to violate such norms.