Successful hygiene scheme moves up the food chain

Thursday 12 November 2015

An online site that names and shames local eateries that aren’t up to scratch will start revealing hygiene scores by food suppliers and wholesalers too.

Environmental Health is expanding its Eat Safe scheme to rate local suppliers to help restaurants source the best Jersey ingredients for their menus.

Deputy Head of Environmental Health Caroline Maffia said: “The scheme very much focuses on you and I as a consumer, but we’re looking at taking it out across the food chain so if a fishery is looking to sell fish directly to the restaurant trade but doesn’t sell directly to the public we will give them a rating too, so it helps them choose who to purchase from."

The Eat Safe scheme, that rates any local business that sells food, has been a big hit since it launched in September last year and has been instrumental in driving up standards.

When it launched, 14 restaurants were given a "two-star" rating meaning that they were poor performers on the hygiene law and two were given the dreaded "no-star" mark.

Now all local eateries have at least got a star rating and they've all dramatically improved their hygiene standards. All but five are now fully compliant with the Jersey food law.

Only businesses that get 3 or more stars can choose to publicly display their star rating but you can view a full list of the ratings here.

Ms Maffia said: “It’s been completely embraced by the business sector, they’ve put a lot of effort into raising standards.

“We had 12,000 hits a day at the start. Each weekend it would go up and drop off again, now we’re getting to the 200/300 mark each week but it’s worth checking from time to time to see if your favourite has fallen from grace.”