Vote with your feet when you eat or shop

THERE’S a Malaysian saying that delicious food can only be found in dirty eateries. Or another one about enjoying your meal but not going to the back of the restaurant to see how the meal is prepared.

Both these sayings illustrate how cavalier Malaysians are when dealing with food hygiene. When a famous nasi kandar operator in Penang was shut down for two weeks for failing to comply with basic hygiene and health standards, netizens took to social media to lament about not getting their nasi kandar fix.

Hello! What about complaining about the fact that this particular restaurant has been operating in filthy conditions?

A colleague from Penang told me that he once saw a large rat at one of the tables in this particular restaurant in Penang Road.

“I alerted the owner, and he nonchalantly shooed the rat away,” my colleague told me. He said that was the last time he went there for nasi kandar.

Speaking of rats, just last week, a popular grocery store in a high-end shopping mall in Petaling Jaya was ordered to close for 14 days after pictures and videos showing a large rat among cartons of milk surfaced on the internet.

Both the Penang restaurant and PJ grocery store were shut under Section 11 of the Food Act 1983, which allows the authorities to shut down unsanitary premises for 14 days.

Proprietors who fail to comply with the hygiene order can be punished with a jail term of up to five years or a fine, or both, if charged and convicted under the same provision.

From news reports, I know that local authorities, especially in the Klang Valley, have been told to crack down on dirty eateries, but from personal experience, I think they should also be training their sights on supermarkets and grocery stores, those that are stand-alone and in malls.

I saw a rat at a stand-alone hypermarket in Ara Damansara near its fresh food section and prior to that, witnessed a rodent running about the dry goods area of a supermarket in Publika.

I have vowed never to patronise both establishments again. But what really irks me is that a ready food source and poor sanitary conditions are the real reasons why rats can be found in these establishments.

It’s a no-brainer. Where there is a ready food source, without proper safeguards, chances are you will find rats.

Lest we forget, the leptospirosis scare a few years ago resulted in Health Ministry warnings about drinking canned drinks that have been kept for some time on supermarket or warehouse shelves.

Leptospirosis or Weil’s disease is a form of bacterial infection that is carried by animals, most commonly rats.

It can be caught by humans through contact with rat urine. The disease can result in liver and kidney damage.

The closure of the PJ grocery store is a warning to hypermarket and supermarket operators to clean-up their act, but in Kuala Lumpur, the recent blitz on dirty eateries does not seem to have had the desired effect.

City Hall officers estimate that over 50% of the more than 5,000 food establishments in Kuala Lumpur do not comply with at least one or several of the authority’s food-source guidelines.

They say that the level of awareness among restaurant workers about personal hygiene and food safety is poor and has always been an issue, especially in restaurants where there is a high population of foreign workers. And the problem appears to be getting worse each year.

Last year, Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) ordered 1,157 food outlets to be closed, the highest so far, more than double the number recorded in 2014 (481) and triple the number in 2013 (317).

Health and Environment De­part­ment director Dr  Hayati Abdullah said there was little that the local authority could do against errant operators who did not fear being ordered to close down.

Hayati explained that taking legal action against them was too long a process.

“The most effective way to make these stubborn restaurant operators change and improve is for consumers to not eat at these dirty eateries.

“When their business suffers, they will make the effort to clean up their act,” she said.

So here’s the thing. The next time you want to eat out, you should probably pick a restaurant classified under Category A.

This certificate of cleanliness is issued by City Hall (usually placed above the cash register) to restaurants that are clean and practise proper food handling methods.

Not surprisingly, only half the city’s restaurants qualify for the Grade A certificate. The rest have hygiene issues.

• The writer’s recent experiences point to the fact that food establishments and supermarkets have a general apathy towards cleanliness. Tougher laws and penalties could empower authorities to take even more drastic measures to clean up these operations.