Gold Coast restaurants fined by council for food safety breaches
City council has pinged dozens of Gold Coast businesses for dodgy food safety practices but won’t name and shame them. VOTE IN OUR POLL
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The city council has pinged dozens of Gold Coast businesses for dodgy food safety practices, with eateries in tourist hot spots dominating the naughty list so far in 2021-22.
But Gold Coast City Council won’t name which restaurants have been fined due to the “significant amount of time” it takes to manually go through the data.
A total of 63 fines were issued on the Gold Coast for food safety standard breaches so far this financial year.
Each fine was worth $689.
This compared to 54 fines dished out the previous financial year.
Surfers Paradise and Southport food precincts recorded the most breaches with 13 and 12 fines handed out, respectively.
Eight fines were also recorded in Broadbeach.
In previous years, the council has declined to provide names of offending restaurants and details of what the breaches involved citing “privacy reasons”.
When the Bulletin asked for clarification on why restaurant names and details of the breaches weren’t included with the 2021-22 figures, a council spokeswoman cited time constraints.
“It would be a manual process and would take someone a significant amount of time to go through each individual case to get the details,” she said.
The spokeswoman said food safety was its number one priority.
“Environmental Health officers look at a wide range of issues in food businesses such as temperature control, safe food handling and storage, cleaning, pest control and hand washing,” she said.
“Businesses receive a star rating based on their food safety performance under the City’s Eat Safe program. They can use this star rating to promote themselves.
“Food safety rating schemes operate alongside regulatory systems and have been effective in reducing food related illnesses in cities across the world.”
Eat Safe star ratings for Gold Coast food venues can be found below.
Food businesses considered excellent performers receive five stars, very good performers get four stars and good performers receive three stars.
There are a number of reasons why a business may not display its star rating.
This can be because the business:
– received a food safety rating of less than three stars
– received a food safety rating of three or more stars but has chosen not to have its star rating made public
– is a domestic water distributor or short term, temporary food stall. These activities are not given a star rating
– is a food vehicle licensed in another local government area which does not have an ‘Eat Safe’ program
– sells food deemed to be low-risk and therefore does not require a food licence under state legislation
– has not applied for a food licence, even though it is required to. This is an offence under the Food Act 2006.
Anyone who believes they have become ill due to eating out or getting takeaway food should report the issue to council as soon as possible on 07 5667 5988.
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