Only 4 out of 100 restaurants provide quality food: Study

News Desk :
Only four out of 100 restaurants in Bangladesh met the food quality standards, according to a 2018 survey by the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority.
These four restaurants received a green sticker, which represents that the place meets the standards set by the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority.
During the survey, the authorities introduced the process of giving coloured stickers — red, yellow, and green — to identify the restaurants’ quality of food.
The yellow sticker represents the restaurants have some issues that could be improved with a little effort and the red ones point out that the restaurants have poor quality food.
A total of 51 restaurants among 100 received red stickers, while 45 got yellow stickers, which projects a dreadful situation in the food quality of Bangladeshi restaurants.
This was the first attempt to examine the food quality situation in Bangladeshi restaurants on a smaller scale, which showed 51% of the food stalls are of low quality.
In the next four years, the Food Safety Authority was able to put stickers on only 150 restaurants across the country.
Even so, their experience was quite bad, as they did not find even 10% of food stores that serve quality foods.
There are a total of 11 institutions to look at various aspects of different restaurants in Bangladesh, however, the quality of food seems to be low.
A controversy arose when a customer complained that Sultan’s Dine, a popular biryani outlet in Dhaka, was using meat from other animals other than mutton in their food.
As per the complaint, the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection conducted a raid and later held a hearing that ruled out the accusations.
There are frequent reports of raids and fines for substandard food in various restaurants in Dhaka; there are also reports of hotels being shut down over it.
However, after a few days of these raids and “punitive” measures, everything goes back to the same situation.
Reflecting on the matter, Monjur Mohammad Shahriar, the director of the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection (DNCRP), said: “We often receive complaints like this. Some even come to us with food. We examine, hear the complaints and decide.”
“A few days ago, a customer showed up with cooked beef. He had doubts about that meat. Later, we checked and found that it was actually beef. However, we found several food stalls using fabric dyes instead of food grade colour in their food, which is atrocious,” he added.
According to the official, cleanliness has increased in restaurants but Food Safety Authority has the main job of ensuring that Bangladeshi food stalls serve quality food.
However, the hotel owners complain that apart from various government departments, the city corporation and municipality are supposed to visit them to check their quality, but they only harass them while visiting.
Dr Shahadev Chandra Saha of the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority said they examine the quality of foods through different criteria, including food ingredients, cooking environment, raw food storage methods, cleanliness of the environment, serving, and staff.
“Considering these factors, even 10% of restaurants do not meet the standard,” he said.
“We conduct operations and we do have the power to impose fines. However, we are more focused on making the restaurant owners aware and training them. We give them a deadline of three to six months to improve and if we see no improvement, we take action,” he added.
However, this initiative has been deemed difficult due to a lack of manpower, as the Food Safety Authority only has a workforce of about 150 people. Upazila is a far cry, they do not even have offices in all districts.
Abdun Naser Khan, secretary of the Food Safety Authority, said they only managed to examine the food quality of district-level restaurants with one officer and one office assistant.
“We do get support from other departments but that too is not always available,” he said.
There is no substantial research on the quality of food in all types of hotels and restaurants in Bangladesh.
However, a 2019 study, conducted by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), found that 71.5% of the food in roadside hotels and eateries is substandard and unhealthy.
The study showed that 55% of street food had some kind of bacteria in them, and 88% of food vendors had germs on their hands.
Generally, lower-class people eat from these food stalls.
Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) Vice President SM Najer Hossain said grading the restaurants as per their standard was really promising. “But, it stopped for unknown reasons. It should be continued and strengthened.”
Sheikh Nazrul Islam, professor of the Institute of Nutrition and Food Science, University of Dhaka, said: “Usually, the quality of restaurant food is worse than homemade food. On top of that, if that food is eaten regularly, people will become sick.”
Prof Dr ABM Abdullah said many people are suffering from abdominal pain, diarrhoea, dysentery, and jaundice after eating the poor quality food of the restaurant.
“Foods in which artificial dyes are used rather than food grade colour can even cause cancer,” he warned.
Bangladesh Restaurant Owners Association General Secretary Imran Hasan said: “We wanted to be allowed to work like Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA). Then we could monitor the hotels and restaurants in Bangladesh. If our government institutions had helped, the quality of these food stalls would have been better and we would have received fewer complaints.”
Regarding Sultan’s Dine, Imran Hasan alleged that two big corporate groups are looking to enter the biryani business; therefore, many rumors are being spread intentionally to destroy the competition.
“Our industry is a one-man show and corporate groups are looking to grab it. The restaurant business is the biggest market in Bangladesh with 180 million people. Our organization has only 60,000 members. It is impossible for us to tell who is doing what and where,” he said.
However, he also agreed that there must be discipline in the restaurant industry.
The Food Safety Authority has no control over five-star hotels in Bangladesh or those that claim international standards.

The Food Safety Authority initially introduced a system of grading hotels as per their standards, but they have now backed away from it.
Mohammad Imran Hossain Mollah, monitoring officer of the Food Safety Authority, said: “We called the hotel owners to grade their business, but they did not respond. Whenever we go for an inspection, we try to grade the restaurants as per their standards. We only have four magistrates for this process.”
According to government accounts, which are primarily based on trade licenses, Bangladesh has a total of 4,81,000 hotels and restaurants.
However, in reality, this number is expected to be much higher, as there are many small hotels and restaurants in the country that do not have any licenses.