Legislation provides food for thought
The City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder and family day-care operators have reached a stalemate in relation to their classification under the Food Act 2008, after a lengthy meeting with health officers yesterday.
Family day-care operators are concerned about providing healthy meals for their children after the City said they could not serve high-risk foods, such as meat, without commercial kitchen infrastructure.
According to the Food Act 2008, which the City is currently enforcing, operators are under the banner of a food business, requiring them to follow strict safety measures to prevent food poisoning.
Operators say they should be exempt from the classification because their service was total care and not an exchange of money for food. They slammed a council recommendation that providing frozen pre-packaged meals could be an alternative to cooking meat, saying it would not reach nutritional requirements as set down by industry regulations.
More than 15 parents and local service providers, led by Little Gems Family Daycare owner Julie Belhamine, raised concerns with the City's position during the meeting yesterday.
"Parents and other educators are here so we are all on the same page and we all know exactly what is expected from you," Ms Belhamine said. "Because our practices have been in place for so long, we don't understand why it needs to be changed.
"We are all aware of food safety and health safety… our priority is quality of care for our children."
Issues raised by carers have been supported by a petition, signed by more than 250 people, calling on the council to reverse its decision.
While listening to the repeated concerns, health compliance manager Paul Clifton said there were mixed messages about what food they could provide.
"Our priority is food safety … and we need to be consistent across all food businesses," he told the group, adding that they could operate as normal until a few key points raised in the meeting were ironed out.
Mr Clifton said once the petition was lodged to the council the City would review all the comments and they would provide further information about what was classified as a food business.
Ms Belhamine said they were not confident anything would change, but hoped for the best.
