Jeddah Municipality has signed an agreement with Check Safety First Group, a leading British firm specializing in checking food and security measures at hotels globally, to assess and classify restaurants in Jeddah.

This comes in the wake of the municipality launching a campaign to ensure quality food is prepared at the city’s eateries. The municipality had earlier this year shuttered several restaurants for violating health and safety regulations, angering some owners, who claimed unfair treatment.

Jeddah Mayor Hani Abu Ras said earlier this week that the municipality wants to ensure the safety of all food sold to citizens, residents and visitors to the city. The agreement would ensure global expertise in the bid to improve service quality, he said.

He said a team of consultants would install a software system to provide assessment and measurement tools, which would ultimately reduce food poisoning cases in the city.

He said it was important to have a third party conduct independent checks of eateries. The company would evaluate each facility separately every three months, and then classify them from one star to five stars in line with local and global health and food safety standards.

Check Safety First Group “implements risk management systems and software in hotels, globally, to keep guests safe. We also audit how the hotels manage those systems on a frequent, often monthly, basis,” the company stated on its website, which announces which hotels are safe for travelers.

“Each hotel is subjected to hundreds of control points by a professional auditor, which must all be answered positively to get a top score. The results are then discussed and agreed with the management of the hotel and any remedial actions implemented.”

“An executive summary and records document is presented to the management for future reference and record keeping. Only when a hotel reaches a consistently high level of risk management do they get invited to be part of this website.”

The company stated that up to 14 percent of all travelers fall ill while on holiday. “Families with young children and the elderly should be especially careful. In many tropical destinations, the incidence of travelers’ illness is even higher and can reach 50 percent of all travelers. It is also a fact that 75 percent of all illnesses suffered by travelers are food related.”

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