Food and agriculture

Inspecting the kitchens nobody sees

Ask most people what a food safety officer does, and they will describe someone arriving unannounced at a restaurant with a clipboard and a thermometer. For the environmental health team at Selbury District Council, the reality is increasingly at [1] with that picture. A growing share of the businesses on its register have no premises open to the public at all: people selling cakes and ready meals from their home kitchens through social media, and so-called 'dark kitchens' that cook solely for delivery apps in converted industrial units. Officers now spend almost as much time tracing these businesses online as they do inspecting them, and many first visits have to be arranged by appointment, simply because there is no other way of finding anyone in.