1070kg of foodstuffs were destroyed by the Health Inspectorate Service in August.

The service said its inspectors also issued 481 improvement notices to businesses and three products were recalled.

During the month, 25 outlets were visited by the Health Inspectorate early in the morning as part of a monitoring programme to ascertain hygienic delivery of food, particularly dairy products and bread.

The food that was destroyed included 1008kg of frozen lamb due to the presence of two durability dates; 38.2kg meat products due to risk of contamination;10kg of expired milk and cereals; 9kg doughnuts kept in inappropriate storage conditions; 5kg of breaded fish and pizza bases without any label.

In August, 667 complaints were lodged by the public.

97 complaints were related to food. The most common type of food complaints concerned hygiene of food premises (24 complaints), fitness of food (12 complaints), food poisoning allegations and storage of food with 7 complaints each.

Another 633 complaints were environmental health related. The most common type concerned presence of pests (181 complaints), infiltrations (94 complaints), accumulations of refuse (63 complaints), discharge of foul water (40 complaints), foul smells (39 complaints) and leakage/defective drains (28 complaints)

(Note: The number of complaints and the number of categories do not tally, since one complaint received may encompass one or more categories.)