Caterer takes corrective measures to screen vegetables before boiling them
Matthew Vella
The catering company operating the Mater Dei hospital canteen has been allowed to remain open and continue serving food, after the discovery of a severed mouse's head was found in a dish containing broad beans, prompting an urgent health inspection.
The Ministry for Social Policy has confirmed that while hospital staff will be given a financial allowance to buy their food elsewhere, the free food arrangement has now been suspended. But the canteen, operated by Papillon Caterers – which is owned by RJC Caterers – will be allowed to continue service.
Staff members were still making use of the hospital canteen when this newspaper went on-site at Mater Dei earlier this week. Hospital workers who spoke to MaltaToday were split over whether they would be making use of the food service or not. Some said they had just come out of the canteen where they had lunch. Others simply said they will use the financial allowance to buy their food elsewhere. One nurse said he would buy his food from somewhere else, if he actually found time to during his break.
A spokesman said that whilst the government was previously paying the caterer for the orders of food that were claimed by hospital staff, that arrangement is now suspended.
The free meals for hospital staff were previously deducted for a nominal rate from their salaries. Now they are being given a €2.80 allowance for each working day, and €6.99 for those on a 24-hour shift, to buy their food from anywhere they wish.
The caterer has also taken a corrective measure to empty all frozen vegetables in a dish before boiling them. The quality assurance consultants to RJC Caterers confirmed with this newspaper that before the incident, the caterer would boil the frozen packets of vegetables straight away. Bacteriologist Joe Tanti said this practice had already been “studied beforehand” and that it helped to cut down on preparation time and rendered the product as close to the fresh article as possible.
Serious incident The discovery of the mouse’s head – a photo of which MaltaToday has seen – was made by a midwife who helped herself to the salad bar at the canteen. The incident prompted an investigation by the Public Health Inspectorate to determine whether the mouse had been deliberately inserted into the salad, or whether it had been packaged and cooked in Malta.
The inspectorate declared that the mouse had been harvested with the vegetables in the country of origin, Belgium, and then frozen and packed in the batching plant in the Netherlands.
The service provider then boiled the contents and served them at the hospital canteen, before a midwife made the harrowing discovery in her salad bowl.
In comments to MaltaToday, nurses’ union chief Paul Pace, who is an infection control nurse, was categorical about the seriousness of the incident:
“I think it will take time for the caterer to regain trust. What bothers me is that the health authorities seem to have never checked, before the tender for staff meals was awarded to the service provider, to ensure quality of service.”
Paul Pace said several reports of gastroenteritis related to food poisoning among hospital staff back in 2007 – which affected eight health workers – had also prompted emergency talks between unions and management over food being served at the hospital canteen.
“Last year, due to the reports of food poisoning, we discussed the need for a contingency plan and a financial package in such case that another case of food poisoning happens. But nothing of this sort ever happened, as this latest incident has shown.”
The managing director of Papillon Caterers, John Buttigieg, has refused to comment on last year’s reports of food poisoning. Reacting to reports of another case of food poisoning, this time happening back in 1989 at a school, incidentally the Mater Dei school, Buttigieg said a court case had found the accusations not to be true.
But Paul Pace has laid the blame squarely at the caterers’ feet:
“The buck stops at the service provider. It is his business from where the food gets supplied – but you cannot shift the blame onto the supplier. It is the service provider’s responsibility to check the food and ensure it can be served. Vegetables are a high-risk food item that must be thoroughly checked before being served. It’s like being in a restaurant – it’s the restaurateur’s responsibility to ensure the quality of the food that is being served.”
Pace said the union will be putting as much pressure as needed to ensure that a contingency plan is there in case that the food service has to be suspended for such cases.
Quality issues Following the discovery of the mouse’s head, the company destroyed all their stock from the particular supplier and terminated all ties with the supplier. The company also said it had been cleared by local health inspectors, stating that they found the canteen and kitchen “to be up to scratch and upholding all the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) catering standards required by EU legislation, and passing all quality control.”
The HACCP is a systematic preventive approach to food safety to identify potential food safety hazards, so that action can be taken to reduce or eliminate the risk of the hazards being realised.
The quality assurance consultant for RJC Caterers, bacteriologist Joseph Tanti, of Analytica Labs, also spoke to MaltaToday on the issue of food safety in the incident concerning the severed mouse’s head.
Tanti confirmed that while in the Mater Dei case, the caterer opened the bag of vegetables and emptied the content in boiling water – suggesting that there was no way the mouse head could have been spotted during the cooking process – corrective measures have now been taken by the caterer to spread the contents in a large dish and to ensure there are no foreign parts in the salad before boiling. “These packs are normally screened through a metal detector which detects all inorganic material,” Tanti said.
Tanti said that the process of emptying the contents in boiling water “has been studied beforehand” and that it was decided to use frozen products for various reasons.
These included: to avoid bringing soil into the kitchen, since soil is a reservoir of food poisoning bacteria and other disease causing organisms; to ensure all the vegetables are free from pesticide residues, since this is a requirement of the packer; to cut down on preparation time since these are cleaned and half-cooked overseas before packing; to ensure a product of constant quality since these products are normally blanched and blast-frozen immediately after peeling and cleaning at the overseas manufacturing plant.
“As per instructions, all one has to do is empty the content directly into boiling water… the purpose of this activity is to quickly defrost and heat the product thus rendering it as close to the fresh product as possible. No one ever thinks to check a can of peas or corn,” Tanti said.
Tanti added that after the incident, his team opened 20 bags of the product to see if they could find anything. “I didn’t find anything. These producers produce vast quantities of such products and it is quite possible that if this head came from the vegetables, then the rest is probably somewhere else in Europe. This is the only place that this could have come from since it seems that foul play has been ruled out.”
While Tanti goes to lengths in claiming the offending head could have easily been another animal, such as a newborn rabbit or squirrel, MaltaToday has seen the photo of the severed head and can say the appearance is clearly rodent-like, with visible eye sockets and protruding face.
Tanti also claimed the boiling process meant that the mouse head was not a hazard.
“Notwithstanding, this head went through the process of boiling and is not a food safety hazard. One cannot fail to say that it is aesthetically unacceptable and we took the necessary corrective action.
“I reiterate that there is no system which can eliminate all the dangers from food. We do our utmost to study all the steps and try to anticipate all the potential problems. This is the basis of the HACCP system which is a legal requirement in accordance with EU regulations. All our efforts are directed towards minimizing the risk.”
The public health inspectorate also informed the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed for immediate steps to be taken, and to investigate the batch on the European market. It said it had made contact with the local supplier, inspected his store-rooms, and sealed the rest of the crates that came with the same batch.
From Belgium to Finland Earlier this year, a similar incident concerning yet another mouse head, of Belgian origin, took place in Finland.
A hospital patient in Finland found a mouse head among the steamed vegetables on his plate. The health of the patient in Joensuu, eastern Finland, had not been compromised by the dead rodent, the hospital authorities said.
The severed head most likely originated in a bag of Belgian vegetables. The body has not been found and being “a Belgian mouse, the rest of it could be anywhere in Europe,” the hospital authorities said.
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