Environmental Health Officers purchase food from businesses just like a customer would or obtain samples of food from aged cares, childcares, hospital meals and from the community who have encountered an issue with the food they have purchased. We also collect water from businesses that use tank water.

The food is sent to an approved laboratory for analysis. This will confirm that food is safe and suitable, or it identifies issues with safety or suitability which is then followed up with the food business.

The laboratory analysis can detect

• Microbiological - checking for harmful bacteria and indicators of poor food handling including temperature abuse or food handler contamination;
• Chemical - including allergen contamination;
• Physical - something in the food that shouldn’t be there
  labelling compliance -is everything included on the label that should be.

We are also involved in Southwest Barwon region and statewide food sampling surveys which is specified sampling so data can be collected about specific foods, recently these surveys have included Sushi, eggs, raw egg products, deli meats and others.

There are minimum numbers of food samples that Council needs to collect each calendar year and these numbers are calculated by the Health Regulator, based on data about food businesses provided to the department by local councils and information available to the department, and gazetted annually.