Gold Coast café pleads guilty to food poisoning
The trendy Grocer and Grind cafe at Broadbeach Waters on the Gold Coast has been hauled before the court after it pleaded guilty to food practices that left 22 customers in hospital with severe salmonella poisoning.
Grocer and Grid has been fined more than $100,000 in penalties for food breaches.
People became ill after eating the eggs benedict.
As a result, customers were stricken with symptoms including nausea, stomach cramps, vomiting, fever, chills, blood in their stools and diarrhoea.
The court was told of poor food handling practices at the café. These included “temperature abuse” and using a tea towel to drain moisture from eggs used to make hollandaise sauce, was to blame for the outbreak.
And it wasn’t like the owners hadn’t been told they were running a risk.
The court heard the café had been issued an official warning about poor hygiene standards three months before the outbreak,
Grocer and Grind and its owner Taletha March pleaded guilty to charges of selling unsafe food.
The court heard the place is now trying to make amends,
Defence barrister James McNab said the cafe had taken steps to ensure that “nothing like this ever occurs again”. These measures had cost the place $30,000.
Steps to rectify the situation included throwing out all food and utensils after the outbreak. And now the kitchen is steam cleaned regularly. There are also new cleaning and food handling policies to ensure no-one gets sick. As for the offending eggs which caused the problems, they are now vacuum-sealed and pasteurised.
‘Magistrate Catherine Pirie said there was a “very strong public interest” in making sure businesses did not sell unsafe food.
She fined Grocer and Grind $70,000 and Ms March $7000.
They were also ordered to pay almost $27,000 in costs.
Grocer and Grind also had to pay for a salmonella report by Queensland’s chief s scientist John Bates.
by Leon Gettler, August 19th 2016
