Beware of pizza in Halmsted, Sweden

After conducting standard food safety inspections at restaurants in the Swedish city of Halmstad, it was discovered that nearly 90 per cent of establishments that serve pizza failed to meet the minimum levels of hygiene. The Hallands-Posten reported that just nine of the 70 restaurants in town that serve pizza made the grade.Food safety inspectors were genuinely shocked when they tallied the results of their unannounced checks on restaurants in the coastal town of Halmstad this spring. With the vast majority of the town’s restaurants miserably failing basic hygiene, the inspectors were left wondering what went wrong.

“We’re quite shocked. We actually didn’t think it would be this bad,” food safety inspector Ulrika Cederberg told the Hallands-Posten. “There were nineteen places that didn’t have access to a functioning washbasin with soap and paper towels.”

Among the most appalling findings was one restaurant that was infested with a species of beetle that lives off dried fish, meat and cheese. Inspectors shut the place down immediately.

Another restaurant was given a temporary reprieve when the staff stayed up all night to try and clean up the many failures given out by inspectors. Storing food in toilets and no washbasins were major failings at that restaurant.

Local authorities will now give all 61 establishments in Halmstad that failed the inspection another review. The costs of inspecting each of these restaurants twice will be paid by the owners themselves, the Local reports.