Violations up in Canadian flight kitchens

By: Bert Archer

As if being charged for the bland airplane food we once choked down for free wasn’t reason enough for business travelers to pack a lunch, a Health Canada report reveals inspectors found more significant violations in the preparation of food in this country’s massive flight kitchens this past year than in the year before.
Health Canada inspectors found what the report terms “critical violations” in four out of the ten of the facilities that prepare meals for both domestic and international airlines operating out of Canada from April 2009 to March 2010. Given the recent industry trend away from in-flight meals for short flights, the food prepared in these kitchens is mostly consumed by long-haul travelers.
Though Health Canada refused to divulge specific details about the violations or offending kitchens, citing a non-disclosure agreement it has with the flight kitchens, spokeswoman Ashley Lemire did say that it was a “noted increase.”
Last week a USA Today story, based on Freedom of Information Act requests to the U.S Food and Drug Administration, reported on inspections of flight kitchens in the United States that found ants, flies, live cockroaches and roach carcasses “too numerous to count.”
According to Lemire, in 22 announced inspections of 10 flight kitchens here, Health Canada found six critical violations (compared with just one in the previous 12-month period), including raw and cooked food being stored together, best-before dates not being properly marked, staff unfamiliar with how long and what temperatures the food they were handling had to be stored, and improper disinfecting of washing equipment. Sightings of insects or rodents, and the proper documentation of such sightings are considered critical violations – there were none.
Though there is no reported evidence of passenger illness directly linked to any of these six violations, Brita Ball, interim director of the Food Safety Network at the University of Guelph, says that’s not the point. “In food safety, we talk about the potential,” she says. “It’s all about risk.”