German market stalls failed food hygiene tests
FIVE stalls at Birmingham’s German Market were deemed unfit to serve food to the public this year.
Fail notices were issued to traders at the ever-popular attraction and Environmental Health and Trading Standards officers forced the five stalls to shut down in order to make improvements.
Officers inspected the market on Thursday, November 16.
Out of a total of 53 food stalls, 33 passed the food inspection and 15 stalls required minor improvements.
Five were issued with the fail notices.
Despite the fact that the market is much smaller this year due to the Paradise Works, this was an increase on last year’s figure when only two stalls were deemed unfit to serve food to the public.
Inspectors judge three major categories:
Hygienic handling of food including preparation, cooking, re-heating, cooling and storage;
Cleanliness and condition of facilities and building (including having appropriate layout, ventilation, hand washing facilities and pest control) to enable good hygiene.
Management of food safety – system or checks in place to ensure that food sold or served is safe to eat, evidence that staff know about food safety, and the food safety officer has confidence that standards will be maintained in future.
A Birmingham City Council report stated: “Five traders were issued fail notices. This required them to cease trading; this was due to a lack of hand wash basins on the stalls with two also not having any antibacterial spray and one demonstrating cross contamination issues.
“All of the stalls rectified the issues shortly afterwards to allow them to trade. One of the traders was upgrad- ed to an ‘improve’ as there were still cross contamination issues apparent.
“All stalls that received ‘improve’ were subject to revisits”
According to the report, all traders were up to standard from November 21. an