Friday, December 28, 2007

Towards zero food poisoning

THE Selangor state government is extremely concerned with the high number of food-poisoning cases in the state and has ordered its health department to take concrete steps to eliminate the problem.

According to state health committee chairman Datuk Dr Lim Thuang Seng, the state health department is increasing its efforts to monitor canteens in schools, factories and hostels in the state.
“Currently, we have many cases involving school canteens. The health department is going all out to achieve zero case at the school canteens,” he said.

Lim said the measures taken included educating the canteen operators to adhere to the rules and regulations in food handling, making sure that their workers handling food abided by the rules.
Lim, who was asked to comment on a recent case of food poisoning, said that up to last month, the state had recorded 24 cases of food poisoning involving almost 2,000 people, with 14 of the cases involving school canteens.
He said that usually premises identified as serving contaminated food causing food poisoning would be ordered to shut down for 14 days.

However, in the case of school canteens, it was rather difficult to be strict on the ruling.
“The school canteens cannot stay closed for too long, so we just order them to carry out cleaning and remedial work. If the premises is found to be clean, then it can open again,” he said.
“Sometimes the canteens would only be closed for a few days instead of two weeks,” Lim said.
He said that most school canteens had more than one operator, which would help the students even if one of them was ordered to stop operation temporarily.

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