Why mice love big city hotels

Hotels in Birmingham and London are increasingly infested with mice, a hygiene expert told delegates.

Geoff Ward, managing director of Hygiene Monitoring Services, said he had seen a rise in the number of insect and rodent infestations in the last year and singled out hotels in England's two largest cities as having a greater problem with mice than hotels elsewhere.

The reasons he gave for the infestations were "dead space" - basements used to store unused equipment. He said staff may have hit the problem areas with anti-rodent chemicals, but the mice had built up a resistance.

Ward (right) said hygiene standards in the hotel sector had "a long way to go", and added: "Staff aren't paid enough. Because of high turnover, there's too much of a panic to give induction training. Training is not passionate enough. You need to give it from the heart."

He said businesses which impressed him as a hygiene consultant had "good internal motivation and good supervisory level management who demonstrated their knowledge, which is more important to me than chasing certificates".

Despite having better hygiene standards than countries like Greece and Spain, Britain was perceived as "the dirty man of Europe" because of E coli, BSE and foot-and-mouth outbreaks.

Ward said: "We're too process-oriented. We're technologically clever and it beats us. We should be able to have fresher, less processed foods, like steak tartare. It's up to the chef to use good standards of hygiene, but there's a responsibility that goes much further back in the food chain."