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'Unhygienic, but irresistible'
05/10/2006 07:42 - (SA)
New Delhi - Indian street food hawkers
need to be taught to wash their hands before preparing food,
according to a health ministry report on Wednesday that found
many sellers oblivious to the basics of food hygiene.
Besides widespread ignorance, the survey found that most of
the more than 1 500 food shacks, fast food joints, restaurants and other food sellers visited in 16 cities across the country freely admitted to putting profits before customer safety.
"Employers say they don't want to employ trained food
handlers because they think they'll have to pay more," said Dr
S P Gupta, who co-ordinated the survey.
Nonetheless his report, partly financed by the World Bank,
urges a properly enforced licencing system that would only
allow someone to sell or prepare food after receiving food
hygiene training.
The health ministry said on Wednesday it is planning to pilot
training schemes in the 16 cities surveyed, including the
political and economic capitals of New Delhi and Mumbai.
'You think of the taste and just forget everything else...'
Yet despite a year investigating the almost universally
poor standards of street food sellers, Dr Gupta, like many
Indians, is unable to resist the occasional street snack.
"You think of the taste and just forget everything else you
know," he said, pointing out that he recently got sick after
eating fried lentils not just once, but twice.
Visitors to India, whose bellies might be even less
acclimatised than Dr Gupta's, may well do best to entirely
avoid roadside fast food joints, or "dhabas" - all 160
surveyed scored poorly on their standards of hygiene.
Ninety percent of the 320 mobile food vendors surveyed
scored about as badly.
Dr Gupta points out that the majority of the country's
snack sellers live in slums, and are likely to have had very
little education in the ways of bacterial contamination.
And with their tiny operating margins - the reports says
the majority of mobile vendors earns less than 400 rupees a day
($9) - many are reluctant to dish out for the purified water
and other precautions recommended by the report.
Backpacker wisdom has it that your stomach stands its best
chance if fed food that is cooked at a high temperature
directly in front of you.
To that Dr Gupta adds his personal golden rule: "Avoid
icecubes."
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