Eat, drink, and be ...?

Abstract

Should we report dodgy looking foods and food shops to the authorities? Public spiritedness surely demands that we contact the local environmental health officer whenever we spot a suspect pie, a grubby meat counter, or a chilled compartment that is nothing of the sort. Yet how many of us take no action at all on these occasions—other than to avoid suspect premises in future, perhaps? No one relishes being a telltale. Now, it seems, sneaking may not necessarily make any difference, in Britain at least, because the visual inspections of food shops carried out by environmental health officers are far less meaningful than might be imagined. Indeed, there seems to …