i don't like the way indians knead their food eg prata, vadai, and all those doughy stuff ... :(
this is the first time i hear that food poisoning can cause miscarriage ...
Read and weep.
http://thehistorysociety.blogspot.com/2008/01/is-singapore-food-hygienic.html
Lack of hygiene
FOOD handlers say that in their rush to get orders out, they sometimes forget to soap up. And even though gloves are a must when it comes to handling cooked food, not all use them.
A chef who has been in the business for more than 20 years says he has seen it all: from the spitting to the scratching to the sneezing.
'When I catch them scratching their oily scalps and go back to preparing the food, I'll scold them and ask them: will you eat this food yourself?' he said.
Chef Ang Song Kang of Canton Wok by Chef Kang said: 'It's about personal hygiene. If you can't even be clean with yourself, how can you expect to serve others?'
Cooks in Chinese kitchens, especially, think nothing of handling raw and cooked food with the same set of bare hands.
One 50-year-old waitress, who has done the rounds in Chinese restaurants, readily admits she and her colleagues sometimes use their bare hands to arrange food on a plate, such as the cold dish served at wedding dinners.
At a top-end popular Chinese restaurant here, tea leaves are left exposed and vulnerable to cockroaches.
Another waitress said: 'When we're busy, we just use our hands to grab the tea leaves. Or if a plate is stained, we just wipe it with our fingers.'
A part-time kitchen helper at an American-style cafe said her manager even told her not to wear gloves when dishing out food, as it was easier and faster to work with bare hands.
'All the food got embedded in my nails. It was disgusting,' said the 18-year-old polytechnic student.
Food suppliers are just as culpable when it comes to lack of cleanliness. They are known to drop their uncovered fresh produce deliveries such as meat and vegetables on the greasy kitchen floor.
But sometimes, the problem has less to do with sloppy humans than pesky insects.
One 20-year-old, who used to work in the kitchen of an American chain of restaurants, said he would go to work in the morning to find cockroaches inside the giant mixer that the restaurant used to mix batter for its muffins.
Hardly surprising, then, that at least three customers have returned with half-eaten food with feelers hanging out.
The culinary misadventures of Singapore's kitchen keepers also extend to the all-important E word: ethics - or the lack of.
Don't expect cooks to throw out food articles past their expiry date. The rule, it seems, is: it's still good for another six months.
'As long as they don't smell bad, the expiry date can always be prolonged,' said one kitchen helper about sauces, seasoning and canned food which routinely get a new lease of life.
And just because your fruit tartlet doesn't look mouldy doesn't mean it wasn't before.
A caterer says it's not uncommon for food handlers to slice off mouldy bits on these tarts and continue to serve them as if they were fresh out of the oven.
Unwashed vegetables, food that is salvaged from the kitchen floor, thawed meat that gets absent-mindedly stuck back into the freezer: when the going gets tough, so do frazzled kitchen staff.
Adapted from:
http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_187328.html?vgnmr=1
Is Singapore food clean?
Background:
In the recent cases of the people being poison by eating the cakes from a bakery, ‘Prima Deli’, Singaporeans have started to voice out their opinions on the food standard in Singapore. How safe is the food in Singapore? Is the food in Singapore hygienic?