Another post on food hygiene

If you read the previous post, you would know how disgusted I was with the level of food hygiene at the Muslim coffee shop in Bedok Reservoir. However, an incident yesterday let me feel that hope is not lost.

You know how you often see food sellers handle both food and money with the same pair of gloves?

Ever since a few years ago (maybe more, I can't remember), when the government decided to start improving the standard of hygiene in the food handling industry, we started seeing stalls and restaurants getting graded for the level of cleanliness of their food preparation area. Typically, restaurants get As and stalls in food centres and coffee shops get Bs, with a few Cs and seldom Ds. They later introduced the rule that required food handlers to wear gloves.

The irony is, despite the goodwill and intention of improving food safety standards, the plan was not well thought out enough. In the implementation of these regulations, the authorities forgot about the most important aspect, proper education for the food sellers.

What we got instead, were food sellers who followed the regulations blindly. So very often I have seen the sellers preparing my orders with gloves on, then went on to collect money with the same pair of gloves. Other times I saw them put on their gloves and never removed them till the end of the day, in the meantime wearing it to eat, shit and do everything else. What then may I ask, is the purpose of having the gloves on? In the end, instead of ensuring that the food is clean, it seems more like they are ensuring that their hands are clean.

So what's the hope-reigniting incident that I encountered?

Yesterday I was introduced to a stall in Bukit Panjang that sells excellent rojak. But this is no ordinary stall. It was run by an elderly uncle whose stall included nothing more than 2 tables under the covered walkway of a HDB estate.

The thing is, this uncle, running an illegal stall, under no supervision or administration of any authorities, was nonetheless using gloves while preparing his rojak. Unlike the regulated stalls in coffee shops and food centres, he was, in a sense not required to do so. Even more delighting, was the fact that he understood the rational behind the usage of gloves. As I stood there waiting for my turn to be served, I witnessed the uncle use his gloves only for food handling and nothing else. What's more, he changed his pair of gloves for every packet of rojak that he dished out. In addition, every once in a short while, he would turn around and wash his hands in a bucket of water that he had prepared earlier. A quick survey of his "stall" also found it to be no messier or dirtier than the average food stall.

This may only be a little thing, that people might not usually noticed, but for us, in a time when so many food handlers out there still do not have the common sense of using a simple pair of gloves properly and are consistently endangering consumers' lives with their unhygienic habits, I found the uncle's behaviour reassuring, refreshing and uplifting.

I am not asking all food handlers' to follow in his footstep, using more than a hundred pairs of gloves everyday. All I am asking for is that they use their gloves only for handling food, and not money, which is the foulest thing. Or wearing it and walking around. Some simple common sense and a little effort are all that's required.