St Annes restaurant owner fined after admitting 10 food safety and hygiene charges

Food hygiene investigators found discoloured and foul-smelling meat at the Peking Inn restaurant and takeaway on The Crescent.

Spare ribs were found stored in a washing up bowl, and food was dangerously defrosted and then re-frozen.

George Xie, 60, admitted 10 food safety and hygiene charges at Blackpool Magistrates Court.

The charges included marketing food that was unsafe for human consumption and injurious to health, having dirty premises, failing to keep proper records, having no hot water supply to his washing up bowl, and having slimy and foul smelling food.

He further admitted storing cooked rice at temperatures like to produce harmful toxins. The Peking Inn was closed by Fylde Council in August.

Anita Elliot, prosecuting, said: “This place has a long history of non compliance for cleanliness and personal hygiene and the cooking and storing of food.”

She said that the council had been alerted in August by Blackpool Victoria Hospital where a patient suffering from food poisoning had reported eating at the Peking Inn.

She said: “Xie appears to have been blind to the risk of offending and the risk to the public. He was motivated by financial gain.”

Cecilia Pritchard, defending, said Xie’s wife and daughter were ill and were no longer able to help him. She said the last two years had been ‘disastrous’.

Xie, who lives above the restaurant, was fined £2,500 and must pay £1,500 costs and £30 victims’ surcharge.