World Cup 2014 – Health and Safety Officials Confiscate Food

England's hotel for the World Cup in Brazil had out-of-date food confiscated from it by Brazilian health and safety officials. The Royal Tulip hotel in Rio de Janeiro had 2.6kg of salmon, parma ham and butter removed as it was deemed unfit for consumption. Italy's Portobello hotel, which is just outside Rio, had more than 50kg of food taken away. The Football Association said it had no concerns following the seizure. An FA spokesman said: "The England chef has visited the Royal Tulip hotel several times and is happy with the cleanliness of the facilities. He will also closely supervise all the players' food intake." The inspections were part of 13 venues visited by officials. In total, 218kg of food unfit for consumption was discarded. Officials at Italy's hotel discovered 25kg of seafood and margarine past the sell-by date, while another 24kg of meat, sauces, cheese and sugar had no visible sell-by date.

Key Facts

This makes a good news story for the press, but this demonstrates the benefits of routine health and safety inspection as a preventive measure. Would the England team have been overcome by food poisoning without this intervention? Who knows, but that is often the problem when justifying the benefits of routine workplace inspections. My June 2013 blog Are You Safe at Work? covered research reported in the Safety and Health Practitioner which showed that was a clear link between proactive routine inspections and safer workplaces.

Key Management Action

Routine inspections are a key tool in managing health and safety in your workplace and their benefit must not be ignored. It is therefore essential to ensure that you have you have a system for routine health and safety inspections and that you take preventive action where significant risks have been identified.

How Arinite can help

Arinite has expertise in carrying out proactive inspections to help ensure that the first visit you receive from an inspector is not as a result of an accident, or major non-compliance. When you work with us, we will ensure that you are complying with the law and help you provide a safe and healthy working environment that you and your employees will be proud of. As part of our innovative ideas, we have recently developed a Gold Standard in our audit and inspection reports. This is to recognise employers that have made that extra effort to achieve a standard of health and safety management that is well above the norm. Would you not want your organisation to be in this position? Arinite clients appreciate we provide practical, no-nonsense advice about what you need to do to establish and maintain a safe and healthy working environment. My team of health and safety consultants take pride in keeping health and safety simple for our clients. If you need to call upon our expert assistance, or just for an informal chat, please call me on: mobile 0780 361 2948, office 0207 947 9581, or drop me a line at b.richards@arinite.com. Bryan Richards 30th June 2014 Arinite Ltd, Warnford Court, 29 Throgmorton Street, London EC2N 2AT