DIRTY EATING HOUSES.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16729, 19 February 1926, Page 9

DIRTY EATING HOUSES.

MENACE IN SYDNEY, C SOME ASTOUNDING FIGURES. Although officers of the City Council's Health Department carried out h 10,896 inspections of cafes and other Q food shops in the city of Sydney last q year, there are still many of these that are far below a proper standard of c cleanliness. tl The trouble docs not lie with tne health officers, who visit each cafe at n least twice a month, and always without notification of their coming. It seems to rest with proprietors, who £ find it cheaper to risk being fined than to employ the labour necessary to * reach a proper standard, and with an u clement of careless employees. One such worker may bring the " whole staff of a cafe into disrepute, a And the trouble is that the proprietor I is handicapped by the necessities of d diplomacy—if he "sacks" a waiter or v waitress he may lose half his stall e forthwith, or at least he may have j difficulty in filling the vacancy. r Meanwhile, Sydney suffers. But a j better time is coming. * I The whole subject is to be taken t in hand with additional seriousness shortly. A conference is pending to , co-ordinate the work of the inspectors of the City Council and of the Public , Health Department —they frequently ] I overlap—and presently the City Council will pass regulations requiring all eating houses to be registered. Repealed offences then will render an eating house liable to be dclicensed. Another important point touching the health of the city is that of the registration of hairdressers. By-laws, bringing this system into operation will come before the City Council shortly, and it is expected that all hairdressers in the city, numbering 223 at present, will shortly be required to take out licenses, and become subject to inspection by health officers. Meanwhile, it is interesting to consider some of the figures involved fa the wide operations of the City Health Department, as compiled by the chief inspector (Mr W. 0. Vogwcll), and made available by the Town Clerk (Mr W. G. Layton). Health inspections for the department are carried out by 13 general inspectors and three inspectors of butchers' shops. Last year these three men covered 9322 inspections of butchers' shops. At the same time, 2283 milk shops were inspected, and something like 1000 samples of milk taken for analysis. The number of milk vendors in the city area is 1185. A strong point is made by officers of the department in regard to the structural condition of cafes. This caused them to serve 225 notices on occupiers for improvements during last year alone —a total of 12G5 since 1920. Further than this, since 1920 they have caused the complete closure j of 104 eating houses because the pre- ' raises were unsuitable. But there seems to be a doubt as to the powers ' of the department in '.his drastic 1 respect, and a halt has been called on closures pending the passage of tho ' sweeping regulations providing for 1 licenses and general control. , Fines Too Light. , '. In the opinion of health officers, „ fines generally are too low in the mal jority of cases of conviction for dirty * premises. There have'been instances in which eating houses were in a conl dition absolutely menacing to public 5 health, and the guilty parties were 1 fined only a couple of pounds—almost " an invitation to go and do it again! ; - At other times the punishment v comes nearer to fitting the crime. The 3 filthy condition of Chinese restaurants s in Campbell Street, for instance, earne cd the responsible party fines of 10s e a day on each of two charges—a total of £lls. After that the premises n were improved. In another case, the - City Council's officers prosecuted - twice, and the officers of the Health 5 Department three times—sufficient in- _ dication, surely, of the supreme impertinence of some cafe proprietors. c In this case, also, the fines were salutary. Obviously, though, the place should have been closed altogether, for on each occasion its filth was almost indescribable.

The prosecutions carried out by council officers under the Pure FoodsAct last year totalled 19, and the fines amounted to £196. The total prosecutions numbered 379, this figure including liß of casual folk who had forgotten to cover their garbage bins.

Incidentally, enough food to feed a small army (were the provender in good condition) was condemned by health officers as unsound. This included 12,800 rabbits, 12801 b of veal, 8501 b of tinned meal, 6621 b of bacon and ham, 7631 b of beef, 7401 b of mutton, 3337 tins of fish, 43,81211; of swede turnips, 47001 b of prunes, and joLs of other "delicacies" that an unsuspecting public would have had upon the domestic table but that the health officers got in first. Incidentally, also, it is of interest to note that there are in the city of Sydney 220 restaurants, 223 lea-rooms, 103 butchers' shops, 73 ham and beet shops, 4 5 fish shops, 27 fish cafes, 34 bakehouses, 375 grocers' shops, and .125 soda fountains, lo say nothing of the modest coffee stall and its relatives. A Groundless Rumour. There has been some talk lately as i: of vyplioid fever and ils affinity with dirty food premises. The chief health inspector stales that these rumours are groundless, so far as the city is concerned. For Ihe fortnight ending last Monday, he says, there were only two cases of typhoid in the city, and during the whole of last year there were only 13. Infectious diseases generally last year totalled 245, including 121 of diphtheria, 105 of scarlet fever, four of infantile paralysis, and four of meningitis. The dread of a worse disease than any of these keeps the department continually attacking rats. They caused no less than 85,000 bails for rodents to be set last year, and, apart from the huge number that crawled away Io die, over 5000 bodies of the animals were recovered for biological examination. It is expected that many useful lessons from other countries, in the administration of food Jaws, will be gained by the City Council as the result of an extended trip which .Mr Vogwcll is about, lo make. lie will go lo the United States, Canada, and Great, Britain in order to study city health administration, particularly in the light of the possibility of the establishment of a Greater Sydney in Ihe near future.