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Appalling health standards in Bangalore hotels
Written By idontspam - 24 July, 2012
Bangalore BBMP Hotels Media Reports public health Health resturants
It is a well known fact in all markets & mandis you will visit that the rotten vegetables they stack on the side are for hotels.
...a working professional, does not eat out often. He has a good reason. He still shudders at the memory of falling seriously ill after grabbing a quick bite at a famous eatery in Jayanagar 4 Block.
...was shocked to see a cockroach traipsing over a sandwich kept at the display counter.“When I pointed it out to the manager, he removed the cockroach but kept the sandwich back. It was only when I insisted that he throw it that he grudgingly did so,” he said.
...mid-segment eateries routinely procure rotten vegetables and meat of poor quality at half the price, and marinate them in heavy spices to mask the taste. “Rice is also recycled. Rice made in the afternoon is washed thoroughly to separate the grains and is then turned into fried rice. Whatever is left over becomes curd rice
...meat is salvaged from the gravy and washed, and becomes kebabs the following day
COMMENTS
There is just one Food inspector from BBMP
dvsquare - 25 July, 2012 - 05:04
For this big bangalore city, there is just one Food Inspector and is responsible so many people.
I don't understand why BBMP is not able to hire required food inspector and other officers for the job, many posts remain vacant for so long.
abidpqa - 25 July, 2012 - 06:35
Recently I read this, example from India itself http://www.timescrest.com/life/a-healthy-plateful-of-phuchkas-8332
There is also Food Safety and Standards Authority of India http://www.fssai.gov.in/default1.aspx
Regarding the discussion on pressure vessels, the BIS mark on the pressure cookers are for pressure vessels
idontspam - 24 July, 2012 - 06:50
Response from the hotels association here
Clearly the Hotels Association have failed to protect their industry from a bad name. Why dont they weed out these bad apples themselves & show the world how self policing can work. They can set up a health star rating & tell public to eat from resturants which adhere to those standards. I am sure word will spread like wildfire if the health star rating is violated. That should be incentive enough to keep them honest. People should vote with their feet on such issues.
If any of you have seen unhealthy resturants post the name & address here with incident details & a photograph. Let take it to BBMP & to the association & see if they do anything about it. It will be helpful to understand what is healthy as per BBMP & what is not. So if any of you have that data do post it here as well
sanjayv - 24 July, 2012 - 09:38
It is a dysfunctional world we live in. I had a conversation just this weekend with someone, who let us say, has had to interact with BBMP a lot. He was discussing the bribes paid to the corporator and such similar issues. In the midst of the conversation, he suddently said something along the lines of "all that these people want is a bribe. Their health inspectors are some of the most vicious".
So, whom to trust? Hoteliers, BBMP? Current answer for me is no one!
sanjayv - 24 July, 2012 - 12:40
Which is why I would rather have the hotel association take this into their hands & prevent such opportunitistic revelations
Self regulation is an ideal scenario. But we do not see enough of it in India. My take for the reason is that currently, the incentives do not exist for such a situation!
Let us try to analyze that. I will use an example which is more familiar to me. In the US and in fact even world wide, pressure vessels (containers that have contents at high pressures) and boilers have to conform to the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) pressure vessel code, either formally or informally. It costs you to get that formal stamp which then becomes revenue for ASME. In fact, the boiler and pressure vessel code is a major source of revenue to the ASME. How did it come about? A history is summarized here.
There were several boiler explosions in the American state of Massachussetts in 1905. The state mandated rules based on the ASME standards at that time. The standards have since evolved with the changes in technology. Since ASME gets revenue, they have incentive to make sure the code is improved and up to date. Serving on the code committee is prestigious. So eminent engineers are willing to serve. Today you have an industry employing lot of Mechanical Engineers, who make or use boilers or pressure vessels, that follows this code which is updated to keep up with the times. Systems have been devised to enforce the code and improved over time, and thanks to other incentives such as insurance and such factors, compliance is very good.
If this would not have been done, people would have ben scared of buying boilers. There would have been many accidents and loss of life.
Come to our problem here. What is the incentive for self regulation in the hotel/restaurant industry. Now we know that many restaurants have dirty kitchens. Would there be a long term business impact? Somehow, in India, I doubt it (no data available though). If a restaurant had a clean kitchen, would they get more business? Naah, I doubt that also. If they had a clean kitchen, would it make it easier to get a trade license or to avoid penalties? Naaah again, everything happens through bribe. In fact, if your kitchen is cleaner, maybe the bribe demand will be more saying that these guys have a lot of money!
I submit that until the regulatory environment is cleaned up, no self governance happens. The only other way something can happen is if there is a citizen's movement (or a journalist's movement) and a citizen's audit and publishing of cleanliness levels in the papers which leads to reduced foot falls and bad publicity. Or we should se several deaths or extreme occurences due to food poisoning. In other words, there has to be a tangible impact.
This leads to a digression ... why is it that the IRC (Indian Roads Congress) is so bad at updating their standards?
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