Knock, Knock! Can we join the party?

Thank you for dining at our restaurant. I hope you enjoyed your meal. Here's the bill, and I'm sorry if you think it's on the high side. Let me explain. This first figure is for food and beverage, as normal. VAT is included and a servicecharge has been added. And this last figure covers the food safety levy. Yes, Iagree, it is expensive, but there's nothing we can do about it, I'm afraid. Have a nice day.

Preposterous? Possibly, but if some of the suggestions to emerge from the Environmental Health Congress in Bournemouth (page 9) are taken to their extreme conclusion, this could be the sort of conversation that caterers will soon be having with their customers.

The Government's moves to establish an independent food standards agency have been widely applauded by the catering industry. There is, after all, concern that falling standards of hygiene have damaged public confidence in eating out.

But with acceptance that there needs to be an improvement in foodsafety comes the question: who pays? And, more to the point, who decides who pays?

It's a problem. The Government is unlikely to provide central funding to finance either an agency or increased environmental health authority vigilance. What is likely, therefore, as delegates at Bournemouth heard, is a general levy on the food industry. Even if this is imposed only on the manufacturing side of the business, the price of foodstuffs will rise and the impact on catering will be the same as a direct "dining-out tax".

Yes, it will make bills more expensive, but there's nothing we can do about it.

Or is there? It is early days in the debate on food hygiene and the formation of the food standards agency. Ideas and suggestions are still in the melting pot, and the ministerial group is still drawing up its plans. So it is all the more important that those plans allow the voice of catering to be heard.

So far, environmental health authorities have controlled the debate. But it is likely to be the food industry's end-users that will bear the brunt of any new regulations and, ultimately, the cost of administering and enforcing those regulations.

We all agree that standards can be improved, but how many caterers have been invited to participate in the forum? Not many. Isn't it time for the catering community to have a fair say in how improvements are to be made?

If caterers aren't allowed to join the discussion, they may end up carrying cost increases that have been imposed. So let's open up the debate now, before it's too late.

FORBES MUTCH

Editor

Caterer & Hotelkeeper