AIBU butchery and hygiene

[marykitty]

There is a small and well known butchery in our village selling local products. There is always a huge line outside of the shop and it has top ratings on google.
Last week I decided to shop there for the first time. I am vegetarian but family is still eating meat. So I wanted to buy as local as possible even if it means more expensive.

I went there twice and I was shocked.
First time, lot of people waiting, probably short of staff. The lady at the counter was managing the cash registrer and serving meat. she was using her bare hands to: handle money and credit cards, prepping raw chicken and directly after slicing cured meat again with the hands, not using any sort of tongs or similar, pushing buttons on the cash register, taking meat pieces again with the bare hands…
I decided to order some ground beef hoping she would use a spoon. Nope. Again, same hands who touched the notes from the previous costumer. Than she gave me a plastic bag and the plastic bag handles were of course covered in ground beef.

I decided it must have been a fluke so I went again few days later. Same concept again and this time the guy at the counter stopped to answer his mobile phone right before it was my turn. This time I asked politely if he could wash his hands or use gloves/tongues since he handled money and his mobile, and he was surprised by my request.
I told him I was for sure not the first client making this remark and he said that actually i was. Nobody ever complained.

i will never go there again but this left me wondering…
AIBU to find this terribile and absolutely unacceptable? Am i being precious? I pay good attention to hygiene and cleaning so maybe i expect too much?

That is really shocking. I would report to the Council

I've never seen a butcher do that. IME normally they use a bag to pick up the mince beef etc - so the bag is between their hand and he meat and then they turn it so the meat is inside the bag. Not sure if that makes sense.

All that goes directly against all food handling laws and should be reported to the council.

I used to work with raw meat/fish and you had to wear gloves/wash your hands going between stations.

That’s disgusting but sadly not uncommon - I see a lot of staff moving between food service and till without much care, even if they have a nitrile glove on one hand for touching food with. Hygiene standards are generally bad.

prepping raw chicken and directly after slicing cured meat again with the hands

When you say cured do you mean stuff like bacon or actual cooked meats. If the latter I would be concerned. If the former not do. All the meat will have to be cooked so should kill anything.

As sillysmiles says, I have never seen that in any butcher, shop or outlet. They always have a plastic bag barrier when handling meat at the counter and gloves when butchering carcases - we get to see that in most of the local butchers. It's a point of pride.

You should be able to look up their last food hygiene inspection. Councils publish them online. Might be worth doing that and then making a complaint.

@sillysmiles

I've never seen a butcher do that. IME normally they use a bag to pick up the mince beef etc - so the bag is between their hand and he meat and then they turn it so the meat is inside the bag. Not sure if that makes sense.

Yeah that's what mine does.

That’s awful. Our local butcher has two sides. One raw and one cooked.

There are separate sinks and they wash their hands before putting on gloves on both sides.

Sadly I had a similar experience at our local butcher - in fact I wrote a similar thread almost word for word the same as your OP. It's rank. I didn't go back.

@5foot5

prepping raw chicken and directly after slicing cured meat again with the hands

When you say cured do you mean stuff like bacon or actual cooked meats. If the latter I would be concerned. If the former not do. All the meat will have to be cooked so should kill anything.

heat does not kill e-coli i believe. cross contamination is a real hazard. OP, please contact local council, environmental health, food section.

I have worked in similar environments before where you are mixing between cooked and uncooked. Hands should always be washed going from cooked to uncooked and vice versa. They would absolutely fail any inspection if seen doing that. I never handled money (part of a larger shop and they paid elsewhere) but would probably expect a second person or hand washing if handling money but not necessarily working the till. I would also expect them to use something other than their hands and have had similar experiences of butchers using bags to scoop rather than tongs (tongs aren't actually very clean unless washed regularly). I had to use my hands and wasn't allowed to use gloves (again, people don't wash them often unlike hands) but washed my hands between touching things. It ruined my skin (sensitive skin anyway) but it was the most hygienic and I also worked with fish so it helped to reduce any residual smell.

My local butcher handles the meat without gloves however they are strict about keeping the raw and cooked side separate - staff even wear different colours to show which side they are on. Payment is generally contactless so I don't see any issue.

gross
I would definitely report to the council

They are going against guidance by going from raw to cooked to raw again. There would be a serious risk of cross contamination to anyone consuming the cooked product. Your meat would be safe to consume once cooked but can see how it would be off putting. I think they need to attend your local councils next food hygiene course

@sillysmiles

I've never seen a butcher do that. IME normally they use a bag to pick up the mince beef etc - so the bag is between their hand and he meat and then they turn it so the meat is inside the bag. Not sure if that makes sense.

That's my experience too.

Btw you can search for the Food Standards Agency (FSA) food hygiene ratings here: ratings.food.gov.uk/default/en-GB

It doesn't seem to be entirely up to date as I checked one of the places I worked and I know there's been an inspection since 2019 however it's not shown. I checked another business and there's a more recent one on there so it may not be entirely reliable. I'm also not sure if a business has to opt in or if it's done as standard, every food business I've worked in has had an FSA inspection though.

Grim. But I wouldn’t go in a butcher. I’m vegetarian now and used to hate going in the butcher when I was a child. That was when the floor was covered in sawdust, haven’t been in one for decades.

Try this website www.scoresonthedoors.org.uk/

That is awful OP, no excuse for it. If you live in England, Wales or Northern ireland, your local council's environmental health will have inspected food outlets, including restaurants (there is a different scheme in Scotland). They give the star rating 0-5 on the basis of hygiene. These are the green notices outside restaurants, etc. Businesses are encouraged to post them up in their windows, but I guess they wouldn't do so if they had a low rating. You would want to shop or eat somewhere that had a minimum of 3, and better places have 5. You can find out about particular food outlets and their rating on the Food Standards Agency website. If this butcher has not been visited for an assessment, you can get on to your council's environmental health and ask them to do so.
There is a village butcher in my general area, where it is said they offer organic meat, but it is not organic. I wonder if it is the same place?

That is not acceptable food handling i stood in the que once in a butchers and watched him slice cooked meat with hands he had handled raw meat with so i left without buying anything and sometimes wearing gloves does not make for better practice as people get complacent thinking the gloves are magic and stop cross contamination , a new plastic bag and tip into bag is best for loose meat and washing hands before and after handling cooked sliced meats and slicing onto a piece of plastic is better than onto bare hands

heat does not kill e-coli i believe.

Of course it does, that's why you have to make sure that mince, burgers etc. are cooked through properly.

@FatFredsFriedEgg

heat does not kill e-coli i believe.

Of course it does, that's why you have to make sure that mince, burgers etc. are cooked through properly.

It is really heat resistant. So food has to be cooked at a high enough temp to be sterilised. Not a temperature many want for their beef, steaks or burgers.

And for the past few years there has been more and more research that shows that e-coli remains resistant to higher temperatures than 71degrees - up to 73/74, and NOT to use salt - though they don't know why salt increases heat resistance.

I had a similar experience when I went to a Butchers shop in a small town, near where we were staying in a holiday cottage. I wanted to get some decent sausages and chicken for a BBQ and it seemed like a really clean, smart looking place. As I was waiting in the queue, I was very surprised to see the Butcher use his bare hands to pick up various cuts of meat, then take cash, give change and hand over a plastic bag containing everything to the customer - all without washing his hands! I watched - virtually open mouthed - as he dealt with 3 customers in a row using the same manky chickeny, beefy, lamby, offaly hands, before I decided it might be safer to try the Tesco superstore nearby!

If it was a local place that I hoped to use again, I would probably have said something, but since I was only there on holiday I figured it was up to his customers to decide if they were happy with the hygiene standards or not - and certainly no one else so much as batted an eyelid at him when I was there. I much prefer the blood and bacteria etc. from meat to be contained in the bag, rather than smeared all over the handles - it's just a personal preference though...

It is really heat resistant. So food has to be cooked at a high enough temp to be sterilised. Not a temperature many want for their beef, steaks or burgers.

It doesn't get inside whole cuts of meat, like steaks, it stays on the surface, where the temperature's higher. It's burgers, mince, sausages etc which have to be thoroughly cooked through to reach bacteria that was on the surface but gets into the centre because of mincing.

www.food.gov.uk/safety-hygiene/burgers