It wasn’t the fish, it was a filthy food mixer that sickened 16 this month with Salmonella at Burnside Hospital in Adelaide.

Hospital officials sent written warnings to more than 1,600 people about possible exposure earlier this month.

South Australia Health’s director of food safety and nutrition, Fay Jenkins, said hospital staff were unable to clean the stab mixer food appliance properly, which had led to a build-up of food residue and bacteria.

She said the equipment had been “implicated as a source” of the contamination.

“Due to the way it was constructed, the mixer was unable to be dismantled, which meant thorough cleaning and sanitizing could not occur and harmful bacteria were able to survive within the appliance.”

More for the duh files: Jenkins told a press conference this morning that “this sort of thing should’ve been picked up.”

Jenkins told reporters public hospitals have a thorough audit system which ensures the cleanliness of food operations, and that private hospitals – such as Burnside – also had compulsory audits, but that they were not undertaken by SA Health.

Audits and inspections are never enough.

And if Wal-Mart stopped selling raw sprouts a few years ago because of the risk, why are they still served in hospitals and virtually everywhere else in Australia, the ones with audits and inspections?