Foodies beware! FSSAI notices to 93 city hotels

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The next time you visit a city eatery or order food from one of them,make sure they have a proper health certificate and function in hygienic conditions. Concerned about hygiene at city hotels, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has issued an improvement notice to at least 93 such food joints.

In the last three months, the FSSAI officials had raided many hotels and eateries and also inspected these places. Now they have issued warnings to hotels that have failed to maintain hygiene and do not have health certificates.

According to Dr Shamla Iqbal (in pic) Commissioner for Food Safety, FSSAI, "We regularly inspect all hotels and food joints in the city. In the last three months, after inspection, we have issued improvement notices to nearly 100 hotels. The main reason for issuing this notice is lack of cleanliness maintained in the kitchen. We also notified those who have not registered or do not have licenses," she said.

“If we have doubts about the food they prepare, we take a sample of it for testing and send it to the lab. If it turns out to be of poor quality, then we will take action. Initially, the hotel owners register their business, but when the business grows, they do not apply for the requisite licence.

The raw material should be of good quality. Some owners make necessary chang es after we send improvement notices to them”, she added. PC Rao, president of Bruhat Bengaluru Hotels Association said that the hotels must follow FSSAI rules.

"The FSSAI has issued notices to a few hotels and street food joints for not maintaining hygiene, for storing raw material with expired dates, and having no health certificates. The hotels must follow FSSAI guidelines. We are planning to hold a discussion to enforce this," he said.