A Recent Ship Inspection

Officers from Mersey Port Health recently boarded a vessel to carry out a routine boarding?and water survey and discovered that sanitation standards onboard did not meet the required standards. Officers carried out?an inspection and advised the captain of the need for sanitation levels to improve before they returned the following day.

Initial Inspection Report

During the initial inspection of the ship, officers found several issues with the sanitation onboard. This included:

• No food waste container available in food storage room.?

• The storage room floors had been poorly constructed and maintained?

• The ship’s galley was not being routinely cleaned
• The cooking surfaces and extractor fans were accumulating grease and oil?

• The ship did not have a Water Safety Plan implemented onboard. Thankfully the water tests carried out found no issues.

What advice were the crew given?

To ?improve sanitation onboard the crew were advised by our officers to implement the following:

• A waste container that is watertight, non-absorbent, and easily cleanable should be installed in the food storage rooms.
• A cleaning schedule should be implemented in the ships galley to ensure it is properly cleaned regularly.
• The cooking surfaces, walls and extractor fans should be disinfected and cleaned thoroughly to remove any grease and oil present reducing the risk of fire and keeping these areas sanitised.
• The storage areas were to be cleaned thoroughly and cleaning standards in those areas is to be maintained. The floorboards in the cold storage rooms should be painted over and maintained in a clean condition.
• A Water Safety Plan should be implemented onboard to ensure the safety of the crew and prevent the risk of disease breaking out.

Results

When our officers revisited the ship the following day the cleaning standards had improved greatly. The advice given by our officers had been followed as the surfaces in the galley had been cleaned with all the grease removed, the inside of the microwave had also been thoroughly cleaned. In the storage rooms the food waste that had gathered beneath the floorboards had been removed and the surface cleaned.

We carry out these inspections on vessels to prevent any public health risks that could occur from unsanitary conditions on ships and identify any control measures that must be put in place to tackle them.