Turku restaurant suspected of collecting food from waste bin
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The authorities for environmental health have reported an offence committed by a fast food and luncheon restaurant in Turku. The restaurant is suspected of collecting food and raw materials from the waste bin of a neighbouring grocery store.
The Turku police received an anonymous letter about three weeks ago, claiming that an ethnic restaurant near the market square in Turku was fetching foodstuffs from the biological waste bin of an adjacent grocery shop. The restaurant denied the allegations, but a visit by health officers proved that the tip-off information was correct.
The garbage disposal in the neighbourhood is organised in such a way that the grocery store and the restaurant both have a key to the same waste disposal bin. The purpose was that both should take their garbage there.
However, the restaurant collected groceries thrown away by the shop after the food had passed its ‘Sell By/Use By’ date. What they did not know was that the store kept records even of the food products that were discarded as unsold after their legal period of sale had expired.
Hence it could be proved by reading the EAN-code that a head of Chinese cabbage that was found in the restaurant had in fact been thrown into the waste bin by the shop two days earlier.
Collecting and using raw material from garbage bins is a violation of the Health Protection Act and can result in fines or a maximum period of six months in prison.
Helsingin Sanomat
