Food safety is a crucial part of the health of Honiara. The City Council’s Environmental Health Division has a Food Safety Unit which supports and inspects food safety standards in Honiara.

Our unit works to:

• Provide knowledge and awareness on food safety and how you can prevent food poisoning and illnesses.
• Conduct inspections on businesses to make sure they are sell quality products that have proper hygiene, food safety and are not expired.
• Inspection, seize and condemned expired foods, collecting food and water samples for scientific facts if the food is Safe or Not.
• Addressing public complaints on unsafe food sales in Honiara, or responding to an outbreak of an illness in food.

We aim to see that food sold and consumed in Honiara is at a safe level, this means free from contamination, safe for majority of population, safe for all consumers and safe from having food borne illness.

What you can do to keep your food safe

If your food is not properly prepared or stored, it can make you and others sick, even causing death. But this is preventable.
Easy actions you can do are:

• Keep foods clean
• Cooking foods thoroughly
• Washing your hands before handling
• Keeping them at the correct temperature
• Preventing cross contamination, especially between raw meat and cabbage
• Use clean water to wash raw foods

Your food should generally be kept at these temperatures:

• Cold foods – keep cold at 5⁰c below
• Hot foods – keep hot at 70⁰c and above
• Dry foods – must be stored in sealed containers to avoid oxidation that will leads to food spoilage.

Remember food can make people sick or even kill, so keeping food safe is a key to your health.

Reporting food safety violations

If you have a complaint about a business or food handler in Honiara who is risking the health of others by selling products that are not hygienic and could make people sick, report your complaint to the Environmental Health Division at the City Council.

Call 28295 or come to Environmental Health Office at the Honiara City Council to report your complaint.

Food safety and hygiene trainings

The City Council offers trainings for food handlers on basic food safety and hygiene. These will train you so you can confidentially make and sell food without risking anyone’s health or your business’s reputation.

This training cost is $200.00 per person and takes 4 days.

A person who successfully completing a food safety training course approved by the Director, shall be awarded with a certificate of food safety and registered as an approved person.

For anymore questions or to book training, come visit us at Food Safety Unit of the Environmental Health Division, or call 28295.