There's more than meets the eye

It is a common sight in any hotel for a side board to be used as a 'temporary' area to clear plates or store crockery. At this 5* hotel in Asia, club lounge staff used the side board as a staging post for evening canapes, conveniently placed next to a bottle of anti-bacterial spray.

Every time a member of staff needed to clean down a table they would stand over the food and spray their blue cloth with antibacterial fluid.

Not only that, the canape food in question was seafood (shrimp to be precise).

Look at the picture and ask yourself would you want to eat food doused in Benzalkonium Chloride (or similar)?

Back to Basics:

Number 1 - Seafood, or indeed meat and other foood items, should be kept at the correct temperature and when not stored at that temperature should be eaten straight away.

Number 2 - chemicals / cleaning fluids should be kept out of reach of children.

Number 3 - chemicals should not be sprayed over food items so as to contaminate them.

The issue: The seafood in question was first placed on the side board at 17.35hrs. Remember this is in Asia where outdoor temperatures are 30°C+ and even with air conditioning the ambient temperature indoors is above 20°C. During a period of 92 minutes, the food items did not move but staff sprayed their cleaning clothes (directly over the food) a total of 6 times, in effect contaminating the food with chemicals. Assuming the seafood was removed from a <5°C refrigerator at 17:30hrs (the start of Evening Cocktails) then up to the point that they were given to a guest it was a total of 97 minutes where they were kept in an unsupervised ambient environment.

So what's the problem: Hotels don't intentionally go out of their way to potentially poison guests through spraying cleaning fluid over food or through bacteria, however this instance highlights the acute issue of poor operating procedures, lack of staff training in safe food and chemical handling and an overall lack of pride in their working environment. In addition a child could easily reach the bottle of cleaning fluid, remove the lid and drink the contents. Some may try and argue that as the food was inadvertently sprayed with antibacterial fluid it would kill any bacteria.... I really don't think that argument would hold up in the court of public opinion!!

Hotel management were made aware of the issue and chemicals were kept out of sight for the next the evening. Sadly two nights after raising the issue, the bottle was back and this time was even easier for a child to grab hold of.

Hotel operators, get in contact for a full review of your SOP's and adherence to cleaning protocols.