The spin on food hygiene

It's all good news on the food outlet hygiene front if you look at the way the story today is presented.

Gulf News headlines the story: "Hygiene standards improve in food establishments".

The first para tells us that "food establishments in Dubai saw a qualitative improvement in their standards of hygiene last year".

Later it tells us that "the amount of fines fell by 50%" and that "the year 2010 saw saw a significant reduction in the number of violations".

All true according to the report issued by Dubai Municipality.

But if you look at the figures there's another way the story could have been slanted, equally accurate.

There were in 2010 a total of 7,778 violations. While that's better than the 14,188 the previous year it's still a long way from acceptable in my opinion.

Nearly 8,000 hygiene violations by food outlets detected...how many of us does that put at risk?

In fact it's about 20% of the inspections carried out, and that is surely far too high.

We're going in the right direction but there's still a huge amount to be done, not least of which is education in hygiene for those involved in handling our food.

The Gulf News story is here.