The Olympic food trials

It will be the largest peacetime catering operation ever, says LOCOG - and that’s just the 14 million meals the Olympic organisers expect to serve at the Games’ 40 venues over the fortnight.

Food outlets in close proximity to the official venues will also get a major boost. But with such opportunity comes great challenges - not least on the food safety front.

The danger of a food poisoning outbreak is very real, warn experts. In London, as deliveries are disrupted by the expected traffic chaos, the temptation to cut corners in the storage, preparation and service of food will increase. The opportunity to make a quick buck from the huge influx of people to feed will also inevitably attract the unscrupulous. So what’s being done to keep London 2012’s food safe?

I joined a spot inspection of a supermarket in Tower Hamlets, East London, to find out. With the Olympic Park on its doorstep, this London borough - one of the most deprived areas in Britain - is expecting 300,000 extra visitors a day during the Games fortnight. That’s good news for the borough’s 2,500 food outlets - from Brick Lane’s curry houses to supermarkets with food-to-go counters - but there is a caveat.

“The concern is that people will take more risks to make money during the Games,” says Tower Hamlets’ food safety inspector Ben Milligan, part of a 10-strong task force created by the FSA to monitor food safety in the build-up to the Games. “Busy kitchens are difficult to manage effectively and what we sometimes see is that as soon as people get a full restaurant or a busy shop, corners begin to be cut and food hygiene goes out of the window.”

The Tower Hamlets c-store was last inspected in February, when the team discovered evidence of mice, lack of ventilation in the basement bakery, leaky plumbing, unsafe stairs and no documentation of safety measures implemented by the management. It was given a food hygiene rating of one out of five, indicating that ‘major improvement was necessary’.

A fortnight ago, there were still a few areas of concern at the store, which has been owned by the same Turkish shopkeeper for the past five years. There is no soap or hand drying facilities near the wash basins in the food preparation areas and there is a minor infringement relating to how raw beef served at the store’s butchery counter is labelled. Of most concern is the fact the store has no means of documenting how long baked bread products - mostly Turkish specialities produced downstairs in the basement and served at a hot food counter - have been kept at room temperature.

“It’s not enough for them just to say ‘we check this, we check that,’” explains Milligan. “Because they are selling high-risk food types - ready-to-eat bakery products - they need to document when the food is coming out so they know it is safe. You have four hours to use it before bacteria will start growing. You have to use it in that time or lose it.”

Other than that, Milligan is pleased with the progress made since his last visit. The shopkeeper has replaced hand rails on the stairs down to the bakery, the premises are clean and a cleaning, maintenance and training diary is now being kept.

“These guys have worked well with us,” says Milligan. “Last time we were here the premises had not been properly pest proofed. If you can get a finger in a hole a mouse can get through. If you can get two fingers in a rat can get in. Now they seem to have got a handle on the pest proofing. They are documenting when they do their checks and where and what they are and they have a training record for their staff.”

He upgrades the store’s score - judged on confidence in management, general hygiene and structural standard - to four out of five, or ‘good’, and recommends further improvements (such as storing stock on pallets in the basement, ensuring there is always soap at wash basins and that the time at which hot food is removed from the ovens is logged). The shopkeeper is presented with a sticker to certify his new food hygiene score, but says he will not display it because it shows that he only scored four out of five. “It’s not a requirement,” says Milligan, adding with a note of irritation: “David Cameron didn’t think it was necessary, so now if you get a bad score you can just throw it away.”

In the build-up to the Games Milligan and his team have nearly 70 zero-rated (indicating that ‘urgent improvement’ is necessary) or one-rated outlets to inspect in Tower Hamlets alone. To ease the workload, the FSA has provided extra funding for the borough. Two temporary contractors have joined the team - they will carry out Milligan and his full-time colleagues’ regular duties while they dedicate themselves to inspecting the 70 problem outlets ahead of the Games.

And sometimes enforcement is required, says Milligan. “When you come in and you see someone scuttling off or you hear whispering you know there is something going on and you have to follow your instinct,” he says. “If we find something that requires urgent attention or poses a serious risk we can serve an improvement notice which gives them 21 days to do it. If they don’t act they could be prosecuted.”

The last thing any food outlet wants in the run up to what could be the biggest sales opportunity of the year, if not decade.