A clean garden doesn’t mean a clean kitchen: Garden center fined for food safety breaches

My parents are big gardeners. When I was growing up, every spring I was dragged out to garden centers and plant nurseries while they picked out roses, bushes and other stuff. I’m not sure what else I wanted to do (maybe play road hockey or video games) but I didn’t want to be there.

Being a chubby, food-loving adolescent, I might have liked it better if the garden centers had food.

Tamar View Nurseries Ltd of Carkeel (that’s in the U.K.) has a canteen, but according the Plymouth Herald, their food handling isn’t the greatest and has cost them £21,000 in fines.

The case concerned eight offences discovered by Cornwall Council Public Health and Protection officers during routine inspections of the site. The owner was later interviewed under caution and questioned about health and safety offences in relation to LPG gas storage, working at height and food safety matters which included issues of cleanliness in the kitchen and cross-contamination of stored foods. The company’s food safety management system was also found not to be being operated correctly.

The prosecution said that the company had put the safety of public and its own staff at risk, due to breaches of health and safety and food safety law. But the court heard that the company had now fully taken on board its responsibility under food and health and safety law and had engaged a health and safety consultant to assist them in ensuring that the appropriate standards were maintained from now on. It had also appointed a new chef to oversee the improvement in standards in the kitchen.

The company also pointed out that until this time it had a very good record in relation to both food safety and health and safety and that no one had actually been injured or been made ill.

That they know of.

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About Ben Chapman

Dr. Ben Chapman is a professor and food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University. As a teenager, a Saturday afternoon viewing of the classic cable movie, Outbreak, sparked his interest in pathogens and public health. With the goal of less foodborne illness, his group designs, implements, and evaluates food safety strategies, messages, and media from farm-to-fork. Through reality-based research, Chapman investigates behaviors and creates interventions aimed at amateur and professional food handlers, managers, and organizational decision-makers; the gate keepers of safe food. Ben co-hosts a biweekly podcast called Food Safety Talk and tries to further engage folks online through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, maybe not surprisingly, Pinterest. Follow on Twitter @benjaminchapman.