Sultan Ali Al Tahir, Food Inspection Head at the Dubai Municipality, said the figures indicate a vast distinction for Dubai compared to the earlier years. He asserted, "Only 443 food outlets had qualified for the prestigious A+ rating during 2016."

 

During the visits, the municipality had shut down 124 food shops briefly because of their high-risk breaches. It enabled a substantial number of them to re-begin the work subsequent to meeting the technical and hygiene stipulations and completely abiding by the food safety standards. 

 

He said a surging number of brief closure orders were tracked in summer time, because of high temperatures, which adversely influences the safety of food and nourishment.

 

Al Tahir said that the high risk businesses speak for hotels and large restaurants with great amounts of food preparation. "The increased number of excellent rating was the result of the implementation of strategic food safety programmes for the food establishments in the emirate and their adherence to our procedures to raise the hygiene and technical standards to reach this advanced level, most notably the application of HACCP risk analysis system in all hotels, catering companies, and increasing their effectiveness," he specified.

 

He also mentioned, "This system targets the risks related to the food chain from raw materials to the consumer table. As for the low-level establishments, we applied the Intelligent Inspection Program, which was designed to identify, figure out and analyse the technical and hygiene risks. This has contributed significantly in raising the level of evaluation of the food establishments." 

 

Follow-up visits, he stated, were done to raise hygiene and technical benchmarks of the low-positioned businesses along with random inspections.