The Food Control Department at Dubai Municipality (DM) has launched a food safety campaign, “Safe Food Saves Food,” during Ramadan, said Khalid Shareef, head of Food Control Department at DM.

“The Ramadan campaign for this year addresses two very important issues — food safety and food wastage. Our campaign titled “Safe Food Saves Food” aims to educate the public and the industry on the importance of food safety and how food safety rules by DM help them to reduce food wastage,” he said.

Asia Abdul Wahab Murad, head of Development and Planning at the department, said the Dubai Municipality recommends everyone to follow the following five golden rules in this campaign.

* Plan ahead for the amount of food you wish to prepare based on the number of people and serving size

* Limit the time between preparation and serving. The easiest and the safest way is to cook and serve immediately

* Store food safely after preparation.

* Transport food safely in hot boxes or chilled vehicles. Follow rule number 3 for temperature control

* Don’t buy food/snacks that are sold in the open on the street side and foods sold by unapproved vendors.

According to Murad, cooked rice, meat, cut fruits, salads, desserts with milk, cream and eggs etc should always be stored under temperature control as recommended above. Cooked hot foods should be stored at 60°C and cold foods should be stored below 5°C. Such foods should be eaten within two hours of preparation if the facilities to store food at that temperature are not available.

“Since the weather is hot, cold foods such as salads and desserts can become unsafe very fast. These are high risk foods and should be kept chilled or prepared and eaten immediately. Such foods should not be left at room temperature for a long time,” she added.

Inspections

“We will intensify our inspection drives during Ramadan. As we have to be on high alert in relation to possible food safety incidents in Ramadan we will categorically check and monitor groceries, malls and traditional kitchens,” said Sultan Taher, head of Food Inspection Section at the department.

“We started the inspection programme targeting groceries in Dubai last June and it will be continued with more emphasis during Ramadan. Out of 1,450 groceries, we inspected 54 found not up to the mark. Some of them were found keeping a bad storage system and switching off refrigerators in the night. We have given the faulty ones two weeks’ time to correct their mistakes,” he continued.

He said the inspection drive also started targeting 55 traditional kitchens in Dubai and the officials have finished the process in Al Quoz, Qusais and Nad Al Sheba.

Meanwhile, “the food safety condition in Dubai is good given the high number of food establishments that comply with the specifications and regulations,” said Shareef. He said this while he was explaining the details of the department’s report in 2011.

He said DM’s strict regulations and due inspection had contributed to reducing the food safety risk in Dubai. According to the report, last year Dubai imported 9.5 million tonnes of foodstuffs while it was 7.4 million tonnes in 2010. These food items are imported from 160 foreign countries.

In 2011, 90.7 per cent food items were certified as complying with laboratory standards while it was 89.6 per cent in 2010.

As per the report in Dubai, there are active 13,000 food establishments and out of this number 95 per cent are compliant to the approved standards.

In an attempt to further improve food safety, the Food Control Department at Dubai Municipality has released a handbook in Malayalam for Person In Charge (PIC) who is responsible for food safety in eateries of Dubai, said Shareef.

“We have published the handbook already in Arabic and English. Now we come with Malayalam to reach out to wider circles. Forty per cent of food establishments are run by Malayalam speaking people,” said Shareef.

According to him, the Malayalam food safety handbook comes as the most recent initiative in the PIC programme .What makes this book special is that this is the first food safety book in the world published in Malayalam. It covers all the practices and regulations relevant to managing food safety. He hoped that this would become extremely useful to the large Kerala workforce in the food industry.