‘A rat looked out the window from the inside.’ A day in the life of a food safety inspector

Rats alive and dead, cockroaches roaming free, rotting birds, filthy kitchens and raw sewage are just some of the eye-catchingly revolting words and phrases found in Irish Times stories detailing the work of Ireland’s environmental health officers (EHOs) in recent times.

These stories are based on monthly reports issued by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) in conjunction with the Health Service Executive (HSE) and have been a staple of Irish journalism for years, always attracting readers with a keen interest in restaurant horrors.

The tales – and the tails – generate interest and frequently become topics of conversation across the country but enforced closures are not that common and while thousands of restaurants, cafes, bars, delis and other premises that serve food are visited by hundreds of EHOs every year, only 77 so-called enforcement orders were issued on food businesses throughout the country last year.

Among the recurring food safety issues identified in food businesses were the improper storage of food, a lack of pest control procedures, a lack of proper temperature control in the storage, preparation, inadequate staff training in relation to food safety, personal hygiene and record keeping.

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On a bright autumnal morning The Irish Times meets environmental health officer Claudia Gildea in the lobby of a Dublin hotel.

We are joined almost immediately by the head chef whose job it is to show her around. He carries with him an air of resigned acceptance – with maybe just the merest soupçon of irritation.

This chef all dressed in black right down to his Crocs may not be over-enthusiastic about guiding the health inspector with a torch and a checklist longer than his dinner menu through his place of work so she can effectively judge him and his team, but he knows this is part of doing business.

And he is quick to explain to The Irish Times that Claudia is not the enemy. That might make him a bit unusual.

“We’re not the most liked people when we come into a restaurant,” she says, as she puts on the white coat and wraps her hair in netting.

She is not wrong, and criticism that a minor infraction – which has been addressed by the time the story makes it into the public domain – can generate terrible headlines and sometimes mortally wound a restaurant is not uncommon.

There are also those within the food service sector who believe that the rules insisted upon by the HSE and the FSAI, particularly when it comes to paperwork, place too much of a burden on restaurants.

But Claudia has a job to do and has been doing it for more than four years. She has about 120 hotels, restaurants and bars on her patch and will routinely aim to visit them all in rotation. She sometimes has to scrap her plans if an urgent case comes up.

And what counts as urgent?

“We received a complaint a couple of months ago from a person who was walking past a premises and saw a rat looking out the window at them from the inside. When we were alerted, two of us visited the place immediately and it was covered in rat droppings.”

Given that Claudia’s area is not a million miles from where this writer lives, we’re anxious to find out more.

All she will say is it was a cafe. It is not her job to go public with her findings.

In a labyrinthine structure, she works within the HSE and her reports go to the FSAI, which issues those monthly releases outlining the food premises forced to close over serious health issues.

Rats are an everyday hazard for Claudia, and she points out that although they are generally unseen, they are out there somewhere.

“If you can fit a pen through a hole, then a mouse can get through and if the hole is the size of a €2 coin then a rat can get through and we are in a city right next to the Liffey, so there are going to be rats everywhere.”

The good news is they are not in this kitchen. And Claudia checks that carefully. She looks for any potential entry points and asks about bait traps and how often they are checked. The answer is once a month by pest controllers and more frequently by staff. The chef has the paper work to back it up.

When The Irish Times asks if the paperwork is really that important, Claudia looks like she’s just seen a rat perched on our shoulder and stresses that a food establishment must be able to prove everything they say with documentation, from food safety management plans to allergens to temperatures and pest control.

She says inspectors don’t issue closure orders as often as the general public might think. “We want businesses to thrive and we want them to comply so a lot of the time they will be given a chance to rectify problems,” she says. “In a small number of cases we have to take action and we will send them a letter with the actions that we need to take. And then sometimes we have to issue immediate closure orders. If there are issues with, for example, raw sewage or rats you have to take immediate action.”

She says that while visits can be uncomfortable on occasion a lot depends on good communication between her and the premises.

The communication today is going well and the head chef is pretty laid-back and confident he has all the right procedures in place.

He takes Claudia through the produce delivery process and she grills him about who is responsible for bringing the food in and keeping the records. She checks the refrigeration units and the sinks.

Does she inspect with a poker face or does she tell those she is assessing where they have gone wrong as she goes along?

She says she is open about what she sees. “The first thing I do is wash my hands and if there’s no hot water for instance, maybe that is something that can be fixed immediately,” she says.

She asks about storage policies and gives the freezers and fridges the once over, alerting the chef to potential problems with some of the seals.

He takes notes. She asks about the cleaning of the ice machines and the grease traps and the number of covers in the restaurant on a typical day and the different prep areas, scribbling on her pad as she talks.

It is all very detailed and we’re an hour or so in when – apparently out of the blue – she asks about the burgers.

“Do you have burgers on the menu?”

“We do,” he says.

“How are they cooked?

“Always to over 75 degrees” the chef replies.

Claudia asks what he does if a customer asks for a medium or rare burger. “We have a policy that all our burgers are served well,” he says.

“Well done,” she says and they move on to the rubbish. She takes it in – or at least goes out to look at the bins. They are fine too.

Floor after floor, all the places where food and drink might be served to the public are assessed.

When it comes to the menus, she focuses in forensic detail on the allergens. The menu looks good at least until she asks about the soup of the day.

She asks if it is always the same? He says it isn’t. The chef says the staff inform diners about potential allergens but she makes it clear this is insufficient. It needs to be in writing – even if only on the chalk board outlining the specials. “Allergens are so important because that is something that somebody can die from ,” she says. “It has to be in writing and has to be accurate.”

More time is spent checking all the documentation and – eventually – the inspection is done.

“We got a fair few complaints about food poisoning and the public should know that they can always get in touch with us if the are concerned,” she tells The Irish Times.

And has her job – which she clearly loves – ruined restaurants for her?

She laughs.

“I never sit where I am facing the kitchen, I just can’t relax,” she admits. “And I tend not to eat in restaurants I have assessed.”

“We are not out to get these food businesses. We want them to be compliant and if there are mistakes, well they happen, and it’s how you deal with those mistakes that matters. We don’t publish any information other than the closure orders and they can be really dangerous and we don’t take those lightly. People are apprehensive and they’re nervous, but I think they tend to relax when you start to communicate with them and they realise that you’re not out to get them.”