By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Despite a Parliamentary inquiry’s damning criticisms, Greater Dandenong Council says it treated I Cook Foods in a “fair and consistent manner”.
The inquiry found the commercial caterer’s forced closure for more than a month in 2019 was valid but the business was “not properly dealt with by the City of Greater Dandenong”.
“I Cook Foods was not subject to a sound and proper process, or fair and consistent treatment,” the upper house Legal and Social Issues Committee stated.
There was “minimal evidence” that the council tried to work “meaningfully” with I Cook Foods to address the issues “purportedly first identified during the inspections conducted in February 2019”.
“The escalation of matters to the point of pressing charges against I Cook Foods and Ian Cook seems to be inconsistent with the ‘typical process’.”
All 96 food safety charges were ultimately dropped by the council.
In a statement, Greater Dandenong CEO John Bennie said the “council maintains that it treated I Cook Foods in a fair and consistent manner throughout”.
Mr Bennie said the “abrupt” escalation in the council’s dealings with I Cook Foods “reflects the intense investigation DHHS required Council to carry out on its behalf in response to the listeria occurrence and subsequent death of a member of the public”.
“Various matters of concern were discovered during Council’s series of inspections, some of which the company had taken steps to rectify and satisfied Council at the time.”
The inquiry report found that ICF was “poorly served by auditors and regulators alike over a significant period of time”.
The council had not appeared to “proactively” monitor ICF’s safety and performance, it stated.
It was recommended that Greater Dandenong implement all advice from an internal audit into its regulation of ICF.
The council had initially resisted handing over the Maddocks lawyers’ audit, which found a lack of “detailed, coherent” inspection records and a need to review food premises classifications.
“Despite the evidence from the City of Greater Dandenong that there were, variously, no issues (identified in the audit), or that the Council had taken appropriate steps to rectify issues where they had been identified, this Inquiry and the audit report suggest that this is not the case.”
Mr Bennie said “identified areas of concern have already been, or are being, addressed by council” from the “multi-stage audit process”.
He defended the council’s “excellent record of effective food safety regulation on behalf of the community”.
“Nevertheless, episodes like this will always spark a process of review and learning, and that is well underway.
“Council is now better equipped to respond to complaints and take earlier enforcement action against those with a poor track record.”
Since the ICF closure, the council had hired a new manager, rotated EHOs across sites, started EHO peer reviews, increased resources and restructured EHO area coverage.
The inquiry was “not persuaded” that the council’s changes in its environmental health team would give public confidence that similar issues would be dealt with in a “prompt, consistent, transparent and accountable way”.
The inquiry also found it was “problematic” for Mr Bennie to have conflicting interests as a director of ICF rival company Community Chef and CEO of the council which regulated food safety.
“Conflicts of interest for Councils are rare but will inevitably arise from time to time,” Mr Bennie said.
“IBAC itself has noted that ‘conflicts exist, they are common and can’t be avoided – it is how the conflict is managed that is important’.
“The Victorian Ombudsman has determined that in the matter of City of Greater Dandenong and I Cook Foods this conflict was appropriately managed.”
