Keeping Our Community Safe: The Role of Environmental Health Officers
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Waiting in a café or restaurant and wondering, who is checking if this food is safe to eat? The answer is, Council’s Environmental Health Officers, who are committed to protecting and improving your health and wellbeing by ensuring food safety standards are met at all food businesses in Merri-bek.
Our Environmental Health Officers are here to help new and current food businesses be compliant with Victorian food safety laws under the Food Act 1984 and the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code.
We sat down with our Environmental Health Officers to ask them key questions on what they do to keep our community safe when consuming food and beverages from premises in Merri-bek.
What do Merri-bek City Council Environmental Health Officers do?
We exist to protect public and environmental health. The work of Environmental Health Officers is very broad, but if we were to summarise it in a paragraph, we inspect food businesses, personal care businesses, tattoo and skin piercing venues, boarding houses, caravan parks and aquatic centres to ensure compliance with relevant laws and to keep our community safe.
We action complaints on food allergies where a business may not have followed, or understand food allergen law.
We generally take an educative approach first, and where enforcement action is necessary, we ensure that action undertaken matches the nature and seriousness of the offence.
Our team also investigate gastroenteritis outbreaks at places such as aged care and childcare facilities. We collect specimens and send them off for laboratory testing, while providing education to centre managers to assist in the management and control of a disease outbreak.
How critical is our work in ensuring the community is safe when consuming products from food businesses in Merri-bek?
The work we do is critical when you think about the risk. Consuming unsafe or contaminated food can cause serious illnesses, including potentially deadly illness. Making a prompt response to food complaints is crucial. Incidents of suspected food poisoning should be reported to Council as soon as possible, so the matter can be investigated, and appropriate action can be taken.
What’s the most severe foodborne illness you have seen in Merri-bek?
Our team has investigated a wide variety of food complaints. Most of the complaints we receive come from members of the public but sometimes they are referrals from State Government authorities, after people present to hospital with foodborne illness. Our team has investigated cases of Listeria Monocytogenes cases, a type of bacteria that can be spread through many foods. In these instances, we work with food businesses to identify the potential source of the bacteria by taking environmental swabs and food samples for testing. While listeria infection is uncommon, it can cause death in at-risk people such as older people and pregnant women.
How can businesses in Merri-bek play their part to keep our community safe?
Food businesses have a crucial role to play in ensuring they provide safe food and protect Merri-bek community members and visitors from foodborne illness. Ensuring compliance with food safety laws is one of the most important responsibilities of a food business proprietor. Food and beverage business should conduct regular internal audits to promote a positive food safety culture and to ensure their business is keeping up to date with legislative obligations.
If a business is unsure about their responsibilities or relevant food safety legislation and wants to learn more, they should reach out to Council’s Environmental Health Unit. The team is always happy to help and we want to support businesses to be compliant and protect community health.
What happens if a food business is non-compliant?
Council Environmental Health Officers conduct annual food safety assessments of registered food and beverage premises within Merri-bek. Most businesses comply with food safety laws, however some businesses are required to make physical modifications or adjust their food handing processes. We use a proportionate, risk-based approach to food safety regulation which recognises that enforcement action is necessary in some instances. Low level enforcement action can include follow-up assessments and warnings and moderate level enforcement action may consist of orders or fines. For the most serious breaches, Environmental Health Officers may consider a formal closure of a venue and/or prosecution. A formal closure is a successful and essential tool for enforcing the Food Act 1984, allowing Council’s to immediately shut down a food premises posing an immediate threat to public health. Prosecution is generally used for serious offences, or for repeated less serious offences after other opportunities for achieving compliance have been exhausted.
So, what is unsafe or unsuitable food?
It is an offence for a food business to sell unsafe or unsuitable food. Generally, food is unsafe if consumption results in actual harm to a customer. In comparison, unsuitable food includes food that is damaged, deteriorated/perished or contains a foreign object.
What should people do when they believe a business is not performing safe food practises?
Please contact Council to report food related complaints immediately, and where possible, provide supporting evidence to assist our investigation. We investigate any complaint received about unsafe or unsuitable food being sold in the community.
Information about food complaints is treated confidentially under the Food Act 1984. By reporting food safety complaints, you can help ensure that food sold in Merri-bek is safe and suitable for consumption.
It is important to note, Council’s Environmental Health Unit investigate food safety issues and not food quality concerns. Issues related to the sensory aspects of food are considered food quality matters where there is no associated food safety risk.
For more information, visit our Food businesses page or call 9240 1111 and ask to speak to the Environmental Health team.