Dubai, August 03: Dubai Municipality is planning to encourage all restaurants in the emirate to issue advisories to consumers on safe handling of takeaway food.
The decision follows a similar initiative by a popular south Indian restaurant group that attaches red stickers to its takeaway bags at its two outlets in Dubai. A municipality official applauded the group’s move and said the civic body intended to support such initiatives by other restaurants as well.
“We are encouraging more and more food outlets to put such messages along with takeaway food to ensure that the customer handles the food properly. We will be providing all of them with modified instructions for customers to handle food taken away,” Director of Food Control Department, Khalid Mohammed Sherif, told Khaleej Times.
He said the modified versions of the advisories will include the temperature at which food items have to be stored and the duration within which they have to be consumed, depending on the types of ingredients.
“We strongly recommend restaurants to do this. But it can be done on a voluntary basis.”
In the past two months, three children, including two siblings, have died of suspected food poisoning in Dubai. While the latest case of two-and-a-half-year-old Rishab Pranav was related to reheated homemade food, Nathan and Chelsea D’Souza had fallen ill after consuming a takeaway meal from a restaurant.
Calicut Paragon Restaurant in Karama and Salkara Restaurant in Lulu Hypermarket in Ghusais recently started placing red stickers on parcel bags to remind buyers to consume the takeaway food within two hours of purchase.
Managing Director of Paragon Group of Restaurants Sumesh Govind says the move was aimed at increasing food safety awareness . “Two hours is the ideal timeframe within which food has to be consumed. If left outside for long, especially in summer, the chances of it getting stale or contaminated are high. That is why we decided to alert our customers to eat the food from our restaurants within two hours.”
Customers of the chain welcomed the warning stickers. “On many occasions, we had bought food and left it in the car or at home and ate it later. This red sticker is really eye-catching. It gave me a whole new perspective for my eating habit,” said Shani Damodaran, a regular customer of Paragon’s restaurants.
–Agencies