Unhygienic meat? A blue spray can makes it unsaleable

The inspector of the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) pricks a Surinamese chicken sausage with the sharp point of a thermometer. The sausage is sold at a small stall, where four pans are placed on fondue burners. The saleswomen are a nurse and a teacher who want to earn some extra money on King’s Day. “Oooo, don’t poke my sausage.” The inspector shakes her head, it’s wrong. “45 degrees, that is too cold,” she says to her colleague inspector Ruud Kanis.

The saleswomen are instructed by the inspectors to immediately increase the temperature. Teacher Myria Cairo immediately opens a packet of fuel paste and tries to get things going with a malfunctioning lighter. “I’m going to do extra gel. Right now. All right, sir and madam.”

Ruud Kanis (51) has been an inspector at the NVWA since 2009. Normally he checks restaurants for food safety, but on this King’s Day he travels through the Bijerlandselaan in South Rotterdam. The elongated shopping avenue near stadium De Kuip is full of stalls. A few sell shoes or carpets, but food is for sale at most places. In some places, the smoke from the grill is blue. The offer is diverse: cotton candy, Turkish pizzas, fries and meat from the barbecue.

hotspot

According to Ruud Kanis, this avenue is “a hotspot in terms of food safety” with King’s Day. In the past things were sometimes seriously wrong here. For example, he remembers a delivery van full of raw chicken that stood in the sun all day. He has been looking forward to this working day for weeks, King’s Day is “one of the best things for the food inspector.” With all those different tents and amateurs selling food for a day, he can really make a difference. Kanis, with his blue NVWA jacket, cap and a backpack for his instruments, scans the stalls inquiringly. His eyes are constantly searching for something to test.

In principle, only catering professionals are allowed to sell food, says Ruud Kanis, but the municipality of Rotterdam hardly enforces this, he says. If Ruud and his colleagues see “ordinary people” selling food on King’s Day, they cannot impose fines: only professionals can do that.

Chicken is a ‘life-threatening product’

The inspector has a fixed ritual when he approaches a stall. “The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority”, is his introduction. Then he asks: “Who is in charge here?” Kanis asks a young man with a beard who is frying potato slices next to a grill with chicken if the man has a thermometer. “No,” is the answer. Ruud looks at him intently. “You really need a thermometer, chicken is a life-threatening product.”

Everything else is fine. If that is not the case, Kanis can give entrepreneurs a warning or impose a fine. If the situation cannot be improved immediately, he should throw food away. He has a large blue spray can with him, with which he can spray food “bright blue”, so that offenders cannot secretly sell it.

The work influenced him, says Kanis. In the past he sometimes went to get shawarma after going out, or he picked up something at a Chinese restaurant. That is past tense. “I’ve seen too much.”

Then his eye falls on a stall selling barras, spiced and fried dough. A young woman is kneading dough in record time from a gigantic bucket. But, Kanis sees, she is standing under a tree, in the open air. Bird droppings can fall right into the dough. This is going too far. He issues an official warning to saleswoman Mila Balkaran. He doesn’t agree. “I think it’s silly of them. The organization did not allow me to put up a tent, and now I have a warning.”

Fewer private sales

In general, the inspectors are satisfied. Things are still going wrong, but it is not as serious as in recent years in Rotterdam this year. Their explanation: fewer and fewer private individuals sell food. Ruud Kanis: “Most people now have it in order. That does you good, as an inspector.”

But sometimes hard intervention is still necessary. A stall displaying a large Dutch flag sells stacks of unrefrigerated Turkish pizzas in packs of ten. David Miedema, a colleague of Ruud Kanis, counts about 1,000 in total. He pokes it with the thermometer. Too hot. “And it is only getting warmer,” says Miedema.

A customer who wants to buy a package of Turkish pizzas gets angry. “Are you going to do something, I want to order something, otherwise I will continue.” Miedema: “I would do that.”

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The seller tries to explain why he doesn’t have a fridge. Miedema cannot be convinced. The man will be fined, probably around 600 euros, and must cool all his Turkish pizzas as soon as possible. Ruud Kanis follows the man when he puts some of his food in the car. The seller himself is disappointed. “That’s how the festivities are gone.”

In total, 49 warnings and some fines were imposed in the Netherlands this King’s Day, during a total of 90 inspections. These mainly concerned violations for improper preparation and improper storage of foodstuffs.