HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
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One weekly magazine reported that I had serious diarrhoea after eating the wrong food. That was true, but that was not because of Siu Mei or Lo Mei. The poisoning was found to have been caused by too much pesticide. On the question of food hygiene, I hope no time limit will be set. I think Mr. Kam is right in asking for surprise checks. We have to step up inspections. In case shops are found to be unhygienic, we must step up surprise checks on them.
Ms. Jennifer CHOW Kit-bing's mention of sashimi leads to another problem whereas the problem referred to in the motion is Siu Mei. Of course, sashimi is a problem too. In fact, I think we need to pay close attention to the hygiene of food prepared in factories and food which is not cooked to kill bacteria before consumption. Today, we are talking about Siu Mei and Lo Mei. I hope that Mr. Joseph CHAN as the Chairman of the Public Health Select Committee will not wait to take up items of food one by one. Last time when we talked about sashimi, we gave our support. This time we are talking about Siu Mei and Lo Mei and we support the motion too. I think we should be concerned about the hygiene side of the environment, handling of money and cutting up of all food that is not cooked and prepared in factories. We do need to step up inspection. I support more surprise checks instead of inspection at specified frequencies. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Leung Kam-tao (in Cantonese):—Mr. Chairman, I support this motion for the setting-up of effective measures and requiring operators' compliance so as to ensure food hygiene. However, if we have a lot of measures but no effective implementation, it will be futile. As it is, we have measures to require Siu Mei Shops display food for sale in proper containers, but I think when we go to the markets, we can see that 10 out of 10 shops display food outside the shops. There is scarcely a shop that displays food in containers.
Under the circumstances, I think that apart from asking the Public Health Select Committee to formulate measures, it will be more important to consider more stringent punishment for operators. At present, there are two kinds of punishment. One is to do with court prosecution and fines on conviction. Fines have no deterrent effect whatsoever because fines make up only a very small part of operation cost. The other kind of punishment is the demerit points system whereby licence suspension will be enforced on deduction of a prescribed number of points. Unfortunately, given the small number of our prosecution staff and Health Inspectors, the annual number of prosecutions is very low. At present, on deduction of the prescribed number of points, a licensee is only punished by suspension of his licence for two days and on the second round of deductions, there will be suspension for four days. Such a mild increase does not strike at the crucial point and therefore there is not much deterrent effect.
I think maybe it would be better to implement the second option by enforcing two weeks' suspension for the first time and then four weeks for the second time so as to have a deterrent effect and warn people against violation
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