Page 16 Daily Mail, Tuesday, March 3, 2020
c oM Me n t
About time... Boris
f inally takes charge
CRISIS, it is said, tests the true mettle of a
man. Boris Johnson will find this out with
the biggest challenge of his fledgling
Premiership.
Coronavirus, the deadly global contagion,
is advancing threateningly across the UK.
Increasing numbers are being struck
down – 39 at the last count.
The British people are, true to magnificent
form, keeping calm and carrying on. But
make no mistake: Alarm is accelerating.
In the worst case scenario, Cabinet
ministers have been told, 80 per cent of the
population could be laid low by the
ungrudging epidemic, crashing the economy
and bringing the nation grinding to a halt.
For many, the effects of the devastating
virus – which seeped from a live animal
market in China – will this week hit home.
Perhaps your child’s school will close.
Maybe your parent, a retired doctor or
nurse, will be asked to help the NHS. Will
your holiday flight be cancelled? Can
groceries be delivered to your home?
So it’s extremely welcome that Boris has
listened to the Mail’s implorations, finally
broken cover and taken personal charge.
About blessed time! After all, it’s nearly a
month since the UK’s first confirmed case.
His aides insist he has toiled ceaselessly
behind the scenes. And yes, he featured in a
film clip – sanctioned by No 10 – slipped on
to the Government website late on Friday.
But it’s simply not good enough to
disseminate the message with pre-packaged
promos. A reminder to Mr Johnson (and
belligerent aides): This isn’t North Korea.
He should learn from Theresa May. Her
most impressive political achievement was
standing up to Russia after the horrifying
Salisbury chemical attack. Grasping the
nettle, she reassured the public with a steely
Commons performance and averted panic.
By chairing his first Cobra emergency
meeting since the outbreak began, then
taking questions from the BBC, Mr Johnson
is dispelling barbs he’s a ‘part-time PM’.
In his interview, he warned of a ‘very
significant expansion’ of coronavirus. But
defiantly insisting Britain was well-prepared
to handle an epidemic, he declared: ‘We will
not be defeated.’ This morning, he will
unveil a battleplan to tackle the disease.
This is a decent, if belated, start. Now
could he also show he’s not frightened of
confronting the flood victims?
People demand little beyond reliable
information and assurance their government
has got a grip. Gauging the country’s mood,
a leader must be seen to lead.
Boris, we trust, has taken the first step to
achieving that.
Migrant crisis returns
IN September 2015, haunting photographs
of the body of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old
Syrian refugee who drowned as his family
crossed the Aegean, shocked the world.
Desperate to stop the waves of humanity
pouring in, the EU spent £5billion bribing
Turkish president Recep Erdogan to close
his porous borders.
Today, the migrant crisis has returned
(and, in an awful echo of the past, a young
boy died when a smugglers’ boat capsized).
Erdogan is threatening to tear up the deal.
Cruelly using the displaced as pawns, the
brutal dictator seeks to blackmail Europe.
What for? Because he’s furious Nato didn’t
ride to the rescue after he hubristically
embarked on a military conflict with
Russian-backed forces in Syria – fuelling a
million-strong exodus of refugees.
Why would the alliance help? Erdogan’s
reaping what he sowed. He’s repeatedly
scorned Western leaders, offering his hand
instead to the duplicitous Kremlin. Now
that hand’s been bitten hard.
We’re approaching a pivotal moment. The
US and Europe must return to the breach,
using every ounce of diplomatic nous to
solve this unfolding humanitarian tragedy.
For the consequences of not acting won’t
only be felt in the Middle East. Once again,
the fallout could ripple to our shores.
We’re scoffing our
way to obesity on
fast-food deliveries
with no idea where
they’re even cooked
by Rose
Prince
A
TAKEAWAy diet
based on cheap,
addictive carbs,
oceans of grease
and tonnes of
processed meat — often
rounded off with a sugary
processed dessert — is
inherently unhealthy.
We all know that. Of course
we do.
But our growing dependence
on the convenience of online
ordering means we are not only
consuming more and more of
this noxious garbage every
year, but blithely doing so with-
out having any knowledge
about where the food has been
prepared, or by whom.
And the consequences for our
h e a l t h a n d w e l l b e i n g a r e
proving catastrophic.
There was a time, not so long
ago, when local takeaway
orders — from a restaurant or
fast-food outlet — were cooked
on premises that you probably
knew and were delivered by a
dedicated courier.Risk
But the boom in home-deliv-
ered food, which has seen the
market hit sales of £10 billion a
year, means dishes are increas-
ingly produced in what are sat-
ellite food-prepping stations
known as ‘dark kitchens’.
Here, no customers laugh
and chatter, no waiters man
tables. Instead, ‘chefs’ toil at
their stoves preparing food
purely for takeaway orders
While some of these kitchens
are properly ventilated and
temperature-controlled units
based on industrial estates,
others are primitive operations
housed in shipping containers
situated in tatty car parks
under flyovers or railway lines.
As for the people who work in
t h e s e g r i m , w i n d o w l e s s
hutches, they are rarely would-
b e R a y m o n d B l a n c s b u t
inexperienced and poorly paid
functionaries, often with little
or no expertise when it comes
to hygiene standards and
allergy issues.
If, on a hot day, for example,
these unfortunate cooks open
a door to cool off, there is a
clear risk of contamination
from pigeons or vermin.
And exactly how diligent are
they when it comes to ensuring
peanuts or sesame seeds —
which can trigger life-threaten-
ing allergic reactions in vulner-a b l e p e o p l e — a r e s a f e l y
contained in prepping areas?
There is also a burgeoning
business in unregulated sales
of curries, pastas and party
food made by individuals with
no training in their own kitchen
and sold via social media.
Put simply, this industry is a
Wild West with little oversight,
and it represents a clear threat
to the nation’s health.
As the Mail reported yester-
day, the dangers posed by
unregulated dark kitchens has
been highlighted this week by
the Food Standards Agency. It
has warned Facebook — many
sales are facilitated on Face-
book Marketplace — that it
expects food sold through its
services to be policed.
The FSA’s intervention fol-
lows shocking new figures on
the incidence of food poisoning
in the UK. Cases have more
than doubled from one million
in 2009 to 2.4 million in 2019.
It is an astonishing rise and I
have no doubt it is largely gen-
erated by our growing addic-
tion to online takeaway food.
The statistics back that up.
No fewer than 380,000 of these
cases were caused by norovi-
rus — the so - called ‘winter
vomiting bug’ — with almost
two-thirds of these linked to
eating out or takeaway meals.
In all, 220,000 people saw
their GP, while 16,400 people
were admitted to hospital,
according to the FSA.
This epidemic of sickness has
an immense economic impact
too, with millions of working
days lost thanks to unhygienic
practices and greed.
At the same time, our taste
for takeaways is undoubtedly a
factor in the obesity crisis we
face with 13 million adults in
Britain now obese — a figure
that has doubled in 20 years.
Experts warn that the NHS
could collapse under the scale
of the problem, with £1 in every
£8 spent on healthcare now
going to fight Type 2 diabetes,
which is largely diet and
weight-related.
And yet how many millions of
us — especially tech- savvy
millennials and hardworkingurban professionals — savour
the ease of opening an app on
our smartphones, choosing our
food from the myriad dishes on
offer, and having it arrive at our
front door minutes later, allow-
ing us just enough time to
crack open a bottle of wine and
load up Netflix.
As long as the food isn’t cold
or soggy, what’s not to like?
In recent years, apps such as
Just Eat (2018 global turnover
£7 8 0 m i l l i o n ) , D e l i v e r o o
(£476 million), and Uber Eats
(£1.2 billion) have created a
vast and competitive market.
The figures are mind-boggling.
Sixty per cent of British adults
now have food delivered, on
average twice a month, spend-
ing just under £10 a head per
order, according to a 2018
report. Just Eat, the site with
the biggest UK market share,
took 122 million orders in 2018,
and has about 37,500 restau-
rants signed up here, compared
to Deliveroo’s 10,000.Contamination
Deliveroo has about 15,
self-employed ‘riders’ in Brit-
ain, carrying dishes as diverse
as sushi and burritos, ice cream
and pizza, to customers —
which brings me to another
hazard. While we know little
about where the food we order
really comes from, we know
even less about the drivers
bringing it. (An investigation
l a s t y e a r r e v e a l e d s o m e
Deliveroo and Uber Eats driv-
ers were contracting out their
jobs to illegal immigrants.)
Many delivery operatives are
paid per delivery — so the pres-
sure is on to get the numbers
u p. T h a t i n s u l a t e d b o x
strapped to a bike-rider’s back
or packed into a motorcyclist’s
panniers can contain a sweaty
cheese burger one minute and
a raw fish ceviche the next —
more likely at the same time.
Given the potential for cross
contamination, this matters.
The temperature of many
takeaways represents an all-
too-fertile breeding ground for
bacteria — insufficiently low to
kill them, sufficiently high toenable them to spread. Let’s
not forget takeaway drivers
don’t require training in food
hygiene. Even a course remind-
ing them of the basic practices,
such as washing their hands
after going to the loo, would be
cheap and easy for the app
companies to arrange, and
would help reduce the epidemic
of food poisoning.
But courses cost money and
profit is everything.
Existing guidelines say food
workers who fall ill with norovi-
rus should not handle food for
72 hours or more after they
start to feel better, as they are
still infectious. This should be
enforced for freelance delivery
drivers as well — though this is
difficult to do.Failings
The FSA gives star ratings
out of five to restaurants on
the basis of their hygiene
practices. yet so far it has not
asked delivery services to
make listing these mandatory,
though Just Eat and Uber
Eats do now display food
h y g i e n e r a t i n g s o n t h e i r
platforms for restaurants.
Such lack of oversight has
h a d s o m e e m b a r r a s s i n g
co n s e q u e n c e s f o r f o o d
delivery companies.
In a Channel 4 documentary
last year, the comedian Joe
Lycett attached a cardboard
sign, ‘Le Sauter’, to a builder’s
skip and registered it as a
restaurant with Uber Eats.
Needless to say, his ‘restaurant’
had no hygiene rating, but
when he placed an order from
it on Uber Eats, a driver turned
up to collect the food.
Deliveroo asks its users to
rate each restaurant with a
‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’
after they’ve ordered. Accord-
ing to Channel 4, almost all the
restaurants on Deliveroo with
zero stars were rated above
8 0 per cent ‘thumbs up’ last
y ea r. Z ero st a rs m ea n s a
restaurant has serious food
hygiene failings.
The risk of food poisoning —
which can, after all, be lethal in
vulnerable people — is high.
Finally, while the convenience
of this brave new world is
obvious, how sad it is that so
many children now anticipate
the sound of a scooter’s engine
in place of a parent shouting:
‘Tea’s ready!’
And no wonder Britain is
scoffing its way to obesity.