Food safety spotlight

Tamworth Regional Council has joined the state-wide ‘Scores on Doors’ initiative, introduced by the NSW Food Authority in an effort to reduce incidents of food-borne illness in the retail food industry.

The program rewards those businesses that score highly on their annual council inspection by providing them with a certificate for display, showing off either three (good), four (very good) or five stars (excellent).

Ross Briggs, council's manager regulatory services, said there were more than 300 retail food premises across the regional council area, which includes cafes, takeaways, bakeries, restaurants, clubs and hotels.

Each of them are inspected once a year, with a council officer arriving unannounced to check on the likes of food storage and temperature, food preparation, cleaning and sanitisation measures and pest control.

Mr Briggs said the program had dual benefits, with businesses able to use the certificates as a means of promotion, and customers able to see which businesses took food hygiene requirements seriously.

It offered an incentive for businesses to continue to strive for better standards, he said, and council was offering its own reward for four- and five-star certificate holders by including them on the Destination Tamworth restaurant web page.

“We think it can be a good promotional tool for businesses,” Mr Briggs said.

Mr Briggs said overall Tamworth food retail businesses ranked highly and the introduction a few years ago of a "name and shame" register published on the the NSW Food Authority website had further encouraged operators to make safe food handling a priority.

"We'd be in the top performing areas for food safety," he said.

"(Council) has a good relationship with retail food businesses around the region and they're performing well.

"It's very rare for us to have to issue a fine these days."