Express & Star comment: Despicable way to treat customers
Five star restaurant to a kebab hut – the customer should always expect the people who prepare their food to operate in a hygienic way.
The customers should by right be able to expect safe and clean food to be served, and nothing less.
And so it will shock Express & Star readers when they find out how a former Walsall pizza shop owner shockingly failed to follow the basic and simple hygiene regulations for more than two years.
This was despite him receiving repeated warnings during inspection visits and being offered free coaching sessions to his staff through the Food Standards Agency.
Muhammad Khan, the former owner of Pizza Cottage in Caldmore Road must now hold his head in shame.
How can he have so stubbornly and blatantly ignored the health watchdog, thereby putting his customers at continued risk?
The lack of hygiene in his food preparation had the potential to kill the most vulnerable people in our society.
How dare he put the health of his customers in such danger.
It is shocking that Khan’s staff had no hand drying facilities in place, were not properly trained and no essential food management systems were in place at the restaurant and takeaway.
The kitchen area where food was prepared and served was filthy, a hearing at Wolverhampton Crown Court was told.
It is really no wonder that the judge jailed Khan and thankfully has banned him from running another restaurant.
We must be grateful that Walsall Council’s vigilant trading standards department has taken the proactive action to take the man behind the eatery to court.
And hopefully it will now set a striking example to others, if you flout hygiene in your food business then you are likely to feel the full force of the law.
Cases like this risk damaging the reputation of other well-run businesses in the region.
They affect the trust that customers regularly put in their restaurants and takeaways.
And in a world where we enjoy eating out cheaply more than ever, it’d be a bad day when we start to doubt our food safety.
