Food police:

Is this the year of the rat or the cockroach?

There are rats everywhere, but they usually remain invisible - no one wants to see them, especially in pubs.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com)

Is this the year of the rat or the year of the cockroach? The food police like to base their assessment of a working year on Chinese names, which of course is not a hidden reference to the quality of Asian cuisine. But the discovery of rats in a restaurant in Mühlviertel is a drastic illustration of the discoveries made by the official sleuths during their inspections, which are not necessarily easy on the stomach.

"This Mühlviertel business acted in an exemplary manner, immediately shut down on its own initiative and called in the pest controller," says Astrid Zeller, Head of Food Inspection for the Province of Upper Austria, praising the behavior of the Rohrbach restaurateurs. She has been in charge of food inspection since 2016, regularly accompanies inspectors on their visits and can present many an unpleasant "tidbit": "Last year, we visited a business with a large kitchen. It wasn't very clean. And because we are trained to do this, we smelled rodent urine. We then had everything cleared away and discovered fresh rodent droppings behind a box. They were large 'Bemmerl', typical of fresh rat droppings. We searched everything and discovered that one of the kitchen doors had closed poorly or not at all."

There are fewer and fewer cooks, especially since the pandemic. As a result, there is an increasing lack of knowledge about hygiene in kitchens.

Astrid Zeller, Leiterin Lebensmittelaufsicht

"Terminator" has to move in
The business in question was of course closed immediately. Only after official clearance from a pest control company is it allowed to reopen in such serious cases.

The facts

In 2023, the 30 food inspectors carried out 4170 risk-based sample drawings and 6734 business inspections. In 543 cases, companies were asked to rectify infringements.

The majority are well-behaved, but unfortunately not all cooks
It is important for Zeller to get the message across that the majority of the businesses inspected work cleanly. "The range is wide. There are many restaurants that work really well and some that simply need guidance." For example, it is often underestimated how much energy the unwanted little animals develop in order to get into food storage areas. Styrofoam in particular usually offers too little protection. And it's not just about four-legged pests - six-legged pests, such as cockroaches, can also cause a lot of damage.

Prominent victim of transmitted disease
The rodents' urine and droppings are particularly dangerous because they transmit pathogens. According to reports, the wife of legendary actor Gene Hackman died from hanta viruses, which are passed on from rats and mice to humans.