Chip shop owner fined after customer served raw chicken

The owner of a chip shop in Birmingham has been fined after serving a customer a piece of raw chicken.

Kingsbury Fish Bar, in Erdington, sold the uncooked piece of meat to the customer last February.

The woman did not eat it, took it immediately back to the shop and also informed Birmingham City Council’s environmental health department.

When environmental health officers visited the shop they found parts of the premises to be ‘dirty’ and ‘greasy’, Birmingham Magistrates Court heard.

The owner of the fish bar, Palvinder Singh Dhillon, appeared before the city’s magistrates’ court on Thursday and admitted selling a piece of unsafe food and also breaching food hygiene regulations.

Dhillon, 53, of Warren Road, Kingstanding, was fined £291 with costs totalling £1,534.

Syma Akhtar, prosecuting, said there were numerous breaches of food hygiene regulations including:

• Food not being stored at the correct temperature

• No measures in place to ensure food was being cooked at the right temperature

• Chicken and sausages left uncovered in the fridge

• Parts of the premises being dirty and greasy

When he was interviewed about the offences, Dhillon said he had not been attending the shop as much as he usually did because his elderly mother had been very ill.

Raj Deu, defending, said her client had immediately dismissed the manager who was in charge at the time and had also spent around £20,000 on improvements to the fish bar to bring it up to standard.

Mrs Deu also said he had also attended a food hygiene course to update his knowledge and the fish bar now had a hygiene rating of 4, the second highest.

“Although the top rating is 5, that is extremely hard to achieve so to get a rating of 4 is very good indeed,” she said.

Magistrates said they had reduced Dhillon’s fine to £291 because he had pleaded guilty at the first opportunity and they were impressed and encouraged by the measures he had taken to remedy the problems.