Is that a mouse on my plate?

News that Disney's Mickey Mouse is coming to Malta in January must have rekindled unpleasant memories for a midwife at Mater Dei Hospital who found the head of the real thing on her plate as she was enjoying lunch.

The photo of the rodent, being published for the first time by The Sunday Times, shows the severed mouse head among beans on the midwife's plate.

News of the gruesome discovery on September 1 led to the suspension of staff meals at the state-of-the-art hospital. Instead, the government provided staff with an allowance to buy food elsewhere.

In October, the catering company responsible was taken to court for breaching food safety regulations. The case, being heard by Magistrate Jacqueline Padovani, is still pending.

According to the law, food is considered as having failed to comply with safety requirements if "it is so contaminated, whether by extraneous matter or otherwise, that it would not be reasonable to expect it to be used for human consumption in that state".

The midwife, like all other hospital staff, had helped herself to the salad bar at the staff canteen.

The incident prompted a full-scale investigation by the Public Health Inspectorate to determine whether the mouse head had been packaged and cooked in Malta.

Soon after the incident, health inspectorate investigations revealed that the mouse had been harvested with the vegetables in Belgium and subsequently frozen and packed in a batching plant in the Netherlands.

The service provider at Mater Dei Hospital simply boiled the contents of the packet of frozen vegetables and served them at the canteen before a midwife made the traumatic discovery.

The company entrusted with catering for hospital employees had immediately destroyed all the stock furnished by the particular supplier and terminated all ties with him.

Earlier this year, the same company lost a libel suit against the University's student newspaper, The Insiter, which had carried a story claiming that the University's toilets were cleaner than the cafeteria's tables.

The story had published the results of biological tests carried out on toilet seats on campus and the same test on the tables at the university canteen. The tests had shown that the number of colonies of bacteria obtained from the swab used for the table surface at the university canteen was greater than that obtained from the swab from the toilet seat.

The court had rejected the company's claim and said that the report was a fair comment based on true and complete facts.

mxuereb@timesofmalta.com