Food service inspection reports now online

The Federal Food Safety Agency (FAVV) has launched a new website with inspection results for all business that serve or supply food directly to the public: bakers and butchers, bars and restaurants, canteens and corner groceries. 

Consumer organisation Test-Achats welcomed the move as a step in the right direction but argued that the site does not go far enough. Meanwhile Unizo, the organisation that represents the self-employed, warned that only real hygiene problems – and not a shortage of administrative resources – should be allowed to result in a business receiving a negative score.

The website covers businesses that have been inspected since November of last year and gives them designations: outstanding, very good, good, satisfactory and requires improvement. Unizo welcomed the more “nuanced” system adopted in the place of the originally-planned “traffic light” system where only three scores were involved: green for good, amber for satisfactory and red for unsatisfactory.

The public website does not contain all details of inspectors’ reports, some of which affect commercial confidentiality. “We think we have done enough here to meet the demand for more transparency,” commented Herman Diricks, managing director of FAVV.

Of 108,000 food-service businesses in Belgium, about half are already on the site, with some 70% scoring satisfactory or better. The rest have been told to make improvements, and 4% have been fined for more serious infringements. 

Test-Achats would like to see more transparency, according to spokesperson Els Bruggeman. “Food businesses should be obliged to hang their results on the door,” she said. The organisation also laments that complete results for any given business can only be obtained through a complex request procedure.

Horeca Vlaanderen called the publication of inspection results a “public pillory”. “Consumers are not always able to evaluate the results, which will be visible online for years to come,” said director Danny Van Assche.