Tag Archives: brisbane

Red Rooster fined $50,000 for dirty kitchen

Posted on by
Reply

A Brisbane outlet of Australian fast-food joint Red Rooster has been fined $50,000 after pleading guilty to food standards breaches based on 2009 inspections – the third such conviction for the store.

Prosecutor Luke Godfrey said, "It’s clear there is a large degree of non-compliance particularly regarding cleanliness.”
.
But defense counsel Richard Perry said none of the matters before the court were likely to lead to the contamination of food.

He added that since the time of these offences in 2009, Red Rooster’s Moorooka store had gained a four-star rating from Brisbane City Council for food standards.

Chief Magistrate Brendan Butler accepted some charges seemed less serious than others, and that there was a significant improvement in the cleanliness of the store between council’s two inspections.

"However the extent of uncleanliness on the first occasion can’t be trivialized," he said.
 

Good and bad of Ekka animal areas

Posted on by
1

We’ve been immersing ourselves in Brisbane culture. Saturday it was an Aussie rules football game – my second favorite sport because of the speed and violence aggressiveness after ice hockey. Basketball and baseball would be far more interesting if there was full body contact.

Today was a state holiday in Queensland so we joined 70,000 others for People’s Day at the Ekka – the Royal Queensland Show, originally called the Brisbane Exhibition and usually shortened to Ekka.

Ekka runs over 10 days and is similar to American-style state fairs or the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto: bad food, hucksters of various wares, a large midway, and the best livestock from across the state.

There was a petting zoo, a short of controlled-chaos the like of which I’d never seen (right, exactly as shown) where hundreds of parents and their kids roamed in a large pit with goats, sheep, cattle, and shelled out some cash to feed the animals from a cup. Kids were crying and falling in poop, animals were scarfing down food, parents were interested in the free hat upon departure from the enclosed area.

Both hand sanitation and handwashing stations were available at the departure point, which was good, although reminders could have been more graphic: the compliance rate appeared low.

Other areas of the livestock pens included cattle and goats, where contact was encouraged but no handwashing signs or facilities were available. One budding entrepreneur – the dude in the black hat — offered cuddle-a-goat for $1.

“You two go in and I’ll give him $1 and take your picture.”

“That will be $2 for two.”

No handwashing. Bad.

A table of petting zoo related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/petting-zoos-outbreaks.

Cockroaches, vermin and band-aid: Brisbane eateries fined 200K for past food safety infractions

Posted on by
Reply

More than $200,000 worth of fines have been handed out to eateries caught breaching food safety laws in 2007 and 2009.

The Courier-Mail says court documents show in the past six months nine restaurants were found guilty in a magistrates court for the breaches.

Company Wheylite Australia Pty Ltd received the heaviest penalty, fined $50,000 after being found guilty of nine breaches relating to unsafe food practices and a vermin infestation during an inspection in October 2007. A conviction was recorded.

A&C Business Development Pty Ltd, which held the food licence for Ryutaro Japanese Restaurant at Sunnybank, was fined $29,000 for 29 breaches relating to cockroaches and poor food storage in June 2009. No conviction was recorded.

Hedz No.4 Pty Ltd, which held the food business licence for the Everton Park Hotel, was fined $25,000 for 13 breaches, including cockroaches in the venue between March and May 2009. No conviction was recorded.

Erinwell Pty Ltd, which owned the food business licence for Oasis Juice Bar in the CBD, was fined $20,000 after a Band-Aid was found in a carrot juice in June 2009. No conviction was recorded against the venue.

One in 5 Brisbane food vendors fail; which ones

Posted on by
1

More clarification on Brisbane, Australia’s ‘score on the door’ scheme.

The Brisbane Times reports that 5,500 food businesses were inspected by the Brisbane City Council this year as part of Eat Safe Brisbane, which rates all city food operators out of five for their compliance to food safety standards.

The businesses covered include restaurants, cafes, bakeries, hotels, prisons, child care centres and food manufacturers.

Businesses with ratings of three stars or more can elect to have their rating displayed at their premises or added to an online database.

However, those with two stars or less – which are required to make improvements to meet legislative requirements – will not be named online.

Sixteen per cent of eateries received a two-star rating, defined as having "a low level of compliance with the Food Act 2006 with more effort required to rectify issues".

Five per cent received a zero-star rating. There is no one-star rating.

Lord Mayor Campbell Newman said those with poor ratings were protected from being named by privacy legislation.

However, he said the optional system whereby outlets who received three stars or more could display their credentials, would pressure businesses into lifting their game.

Only 56 per cent of the overall food businesses have their results published online. This is made up of the 21 per cent of businesses who received two stars or less, plus another 23 per cent who opted out of having their rating made public.

Just eight per cent of Brisbane licensed food businesses received a five-star rating, with 26 per cent receiving a four and 45 per cent receiving three.

Businesses who receive high ratings will receive lower annual fees and less frequent audits.

Queensland Hoteliers Association chief executive Justin O’Connor said the system would provide an incentive for businesses to do better in terms of food safety compliance.

Norman Hotel general manager Michael Fallon, whose business received a five-star rating, said he would be wary of eateries who had not made their rating public.

"To me, that tells me they’ve got something to hide," Mr Fallon said.

Baking Industry Association Queensland Paul McDonald said he had little sympathy for businesses who recorded a low rating.

"If you are not up to standard you shouldn’t be open, I think you are endangering people’s lives and that is a risk none of us want to take," he said.

Star ratings can be viewed online at www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/EatSafeBrisbane.
 

Brisbane restaurants fined $338,000 for breaches

Posted on by
Reply

The Courier-Mail reports more than 14 Brisbane (that’s in Australia) food businesses have been prosecuted by Brisbane City Council and fined a total of $338,000 for breaching food safety and hygiene standards during the past 13 months.

Photographs taken inside some Brisbane businesses during snap inspections by council officers revealed messy work benches, cobwebs, rusty pipes, dirty utensils and dead rodents in traps.

One South Brisbane restaurant was fined $22,000 in July after it was found guilty of six breaches of the Food Act.

The findings come as council finishes inspecting the last of Brisbane’s eateries in preparation for the launch of its Eat Safe food rating program.

From November, the city’s food businesses will voluntarily place ratings from two to five stars in their windows, under the scheme first revealed by The Courier-Mail in February.

So far, 4028 businesses have been inspected in preparation for the launch.

About 2504 received a rating of three stars or more and 1524 businesses scored two stars or less.

Of those, 493 businesses received a poor rating because they did not have a nominated food safety supervisor.

Eat Safe Brisbane will award five stars for excellent compliance with the state’s Food Act and Food Safety Standards.

Do not stand on toilets; a graphical illustration

Posted on by
2

We’ve seen a lot of toilets along the highways and byways while making the 19-hour drive from Arkansas to Anna Maria Island, Florida, including a couple of special ones in the middle of the night on Alabama back roads (it was a shortcut).

I told the woman encased in her plastic booth at a Shell station off I-75 in northern Florida that the men’s room was out of paper towel: she sneered.

But the best sign came from the toilets at the Southbank splash park and playground in Brisbane, Australia, where people apparently have a unique approach to using the facilities.
 

Barfing, Berkeley and Brisbane

Posted on by
Reply

As director Kevin Smith would say, Brisbane, Australia, I’m inside you.
(Smith was inside Sydney last week as part of his touring standup Q&A sessions that get turned into fairly entertaining movies.)

Other than torturing Sorenne for 36 hours of transportation from Manhattan to Brisbane, the only excitement was the ‘Do Not Spit Here’ sign on the garbage can in the Auckland airport, also available in what looked like Chinese and Korean.

But there was a good food-related barf story out of Berkeley, Calif.
Julie R. Smith writes in The Berkeley Independent that she used to sneer at germs, but is now plagued with the “social food” problem, when you’re faced with food that has not been prepared in a state-licensed restaurant with a sanitation rating of A+. Unless I’ve actually watched you crack the eggs or cook the meat (and preferably inserted the thermometer myself), forget it. I’m a nervous wreck.

In 2007 I started throwing up at work, which led to throwing up in the parking lot, which became throwing up in my car (a co-worker was driving, thank God), which segued into throwing up all over the ER admittance desk.

After barfing on a nurse and two gurneys, the fun began: I started literally foaming at the mouth. Every time I retched, foam flew far and wide. My co-worker, a staff photographer who served in Viet Nam, was convinced I had rabies.

Two hours later, after shots and IVs and heated blankets, the ER doc announced that I appeared to have norovirus. “Nora who?” I asked fuzzily. …

A year ago, I returned from a trip to North Carolina feeling fine. At 1 a.m. I woke drenched in sweat, fell out of bed and threw up on the dog. Then the other end of my digestive system decided to join the party.

Five hours later I was again in the ER with dry heaves and a nifty potassium drip. The doctor asked if I’d eaten anything “that didn’t taste right.”

“Not really, but I pigged out all weekend,” I admitted. “Chicken, deviled eggs, pasta salad, fried fish, pie, baked potato with sour cream. Too much rich food, I guess.”

He shook his head. “When you eat something that doesn’t agree with you, you throw it up and life goes on,” he said. “This is food poisoning. You ate something that was contaminated.”

So there you have it: Norovirus and food poisoning. Life’s too short to spend it throwing up. Pass me the meat thermometer.

5-star rating system for Brisbane eateries

Posted on by
Reply

The Brisbane Times reports that by November, all of Brisbane, Australia’s 6,000 eateries will be "voluntarily encouraged" by public pressure to display their restaurant inspection ratings, between zero and five stars.

The stars will only judge the hygiene and food safety standards used to make meals.

David Pugh, owner of Restaurant 2 and vice-president of Restaurant Catering Queensland, said the restaurant industry backed the scheme, adding,

"In fact we see it as a bit of bonus, because if you command three, four, five stars, you might get more foot traffic coming through the door. The reality is that the public want this."

A restaurant dude who gets it. Good for him.

Under the new Eat Safe scheme:

• no stars would mean the eatery had not met the hygiene standards of the Food Act 2006 and Food Safety Standards;

• two stars would mean the business had a low level of compliance with food safety standards and "more effort is required;"

• three stars would mean the eatery was a "good performer" that met food safety standards with an overall acceptable level of food safety.;

• four stars would be awarded to a "very good" performer with high food hygiene; and,

• five stars means the eatery has "excellent hygiene" with very high standards in food refrigeration and storage.