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Snapshots from Asia: Grading Singapore's Food Hawkers

This is a C grade. But not just any C grade. This is a C grade issued by a Singaporean Ministry of Health official to a none-too-hygienic food hawker. A nationwide scheme introduced in 1997 to “enable consumers to make informed choices of the food outlets they want to patronize," hawkers here in Singapore are required to display their cleanliness grades prominently beneath their signage. A C grade is "average," with only a D grade, "below average," worse than it. You would assume that in a country as notoriously perfectionist as Singapore, a lousy grade would doom a stall—customers would shun it, suppliers would not want to be associated with it, the sky would fall down, that sort of thing....

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1 Comment | Posted by Wan Yan Ling, July 10, 2007 at 1:00 PM
Tagged: food hawkers, health inspections, Singapore, Snapshots from Asia