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Danish hospital food made in a cement mixer

National authorities have shut down a company that produced food for nursing homes and hospitals in a cement mixer.

Danish hospital food made in a cement mixer
A food official said the company made food in a "cement mixer just like bricklayers use". Photo: Colourbox
The Danish Food and Veterinary Administration (Fødevarestyrelsen) discovered that the food company Nordic Ingredients violated hygiene rules by producing gelled foods in a cement mixer. The food was delivered to public nursing homes and to hospital patients who have difficulty swallowing whole food. 
 
A Food and Veterinary Administration official said that in addition to producing food in a cement mixer, the hygiene levels at the company’s production facility were abysmal. 
 
“It wasn’t just a bit of mess from the most recent production, and we determined that the cleaning standards were completely inadequate,” Henriette Mynster told DR. 
 
Mynster said that the cement mixer didn’t appear to have been cleaned in between uses. 
 
“It was an orange cement mixer just like bricklayers use. There were layers from previous uses, where bacteria and other micro-organisms can easily hide,” Mynster told Nordjyske.
 
According to the food authorities, up to a dozen public facilities receive food from Nordic Ingredients. Many of them spent Thursday destroying all food that came from the company. 
 
Other facilities that have received the cement mixer food include Svendborg Hosptial, Aalborg University Hospital and Vendsyssel Hospital. 
 
Many of the facilities say that they were unaware that the company, which has now been shut down, was not registered with the proper authorities. 

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READER QUESTIONS

Why can’t you get fresh fish in supermarkets in Denmark?

Given that nowhere in Denmark is more than 52km from the sea, fresh fish can be surprisingly hard to get hold of. When one of The Local's readers asked why, we tried to find the answer.

Why can't you get fresh fish in supermarkets in Denmark?

“A decent variety of fish in the supermarket is something we really miss,” the reader wrote in a comment to a recent article. “I regularly return to my old stamping ground on the Franco-Swiss border, hundreds of kilometres from the sea, and the fresh fish in the local Carrefour supermarket is invariably excellent. Why can’t they manage it in Odense, 20 minutes from the coast?” 

It’s hard not to sympathise. Denmark, after all, is practically all coast, with the country consisting of a peninsula and 1,419 islands. 

The Local started by asking the Danish Chamber of Commerce, which represents most of Denmark’s leading supermarket chains. 

“I have spoken with my colleague on the matter,” replied Lars Ohlsen, the chamber’s press chief. “We don’t have any research, but our best bet is that the business case does not work. That if the supermarkets had it on the shelves, they would not make a profit on them.” 

We then approached Royal Fish, one of the leading buyers and sellers of Danish fish, whose chief executive, Donald Kristensen, put the near non-existence of fresh fish counters in supermarkets down to Danish penny scrimping. 

“The main reason is that Danish people will not pay for fresh food,” he said. “In Denmark we don’t have a tradition of spending a lot of money on food. If you compare to other countries in Europe, it’s one of the countries where people spend the least.”

To get fresh fish in Denmark you usually have to go to a fishmonger or fishmarket, like this one at Copenhagen’s Torvehallerne. Photo: Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix

It’s not due to a shortage of fish, he stressed. Despite the decline of fish stocks in waters around Denmark and the crisis in the Danish fishing industry, there remains a lot to be caught in Danish waters. 

“We have plenty of fish but we export all of it to the rest of Europe,” he said. “We only work with fresh fish and 99 percent of it is exported to Germany, France, Spain, Italy, in fact all of Europe. 

“Danes also eat fish, but that is mainly at restaurants, ” he continued. “When we buy fish for private purposes, it’s mostly smoked fish, shrimps in brine, or canned mackerel.”

The closest Danish supermarkets come to fresh fish, outside flagship supermarkets in the big cities that is, is fish sold in gas-filled ‘MAP packs’, which can keep for longer on the shelves, he explained.

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