Episode 2 Rip Off Britain

There's a lot we don't know about the food on our plates,

and the shops and the labels don't always tell you the whole story.

Sometimes there's just too many offers

and when you really look at them,

you're not really saving that much.

Whether you're staying in or going out,

you've told us that you can feel ripped off by the promises made

for what you eat and indeed what you pay for it.

If you buy six, it's cheaper.

But I don't want to buy six.

I want to buy one.

From claims that don't stack up, to the secrets behind the packaging,

we'll uncover the truth about Britain's food

so that you can be sure that you are getting

what you expect at the right price.

Your food, your money.

This is Rip Off Britain.

Hello and thanks so much for joining us again here on Rip Off Britain,

where in this special series, we're taking a much closer look

into the world of food.

And today we're concentrating on something that an awful lot of you

contact us about with concerns, and that is food safety.

Yes, because it's not always easy figuring out at what point a food

genuinely becomes unsafe to eat,

apart from if it smells to high heaven

or is actually starting to walk out of the kitchen by itself!

But exactly how should we be storing our food to keep it safe?

These are some of the issues

we'll be tackling throughout the programme.

Along the way, of course, we'll have plenty of advice,

and indeed some money-saving tips as we unpack, wipe down

and tidy up the loose ends of food safety.

But I must warn you, there are a few shocks along the way too.

When we did some tests, what we found, I'm afraid,

was not all good news.

Coming up - confusion over whether supermarkets should charge

for the bags they put raw meat in.

What's the risk from the big names getting this wrong?

We're worried that there would be some cross-contamination

and something bad could happen from this.

And with the wording on the labels giving some of you the chills,

we settle the debate on whether it is safe to refreeze your fish.

On the back of the pack,

there was the snowflake, which said suitable for freezing.

On the front it said it had already been frozen.

So I had a basic conflict.

What do I do now?

The plastic bag charge.

If you remember, that was so shocking to some people

when it first came in, but now it's well and truly here to stay.

But that doesn't mean that confusion about which bags you should

and should not be charged for has gone away.

Now, take, for example, plastic bags when you buy raw meat or fish.

Should you have to pay for those or not?

Well, one Rip Off Britain viewer contacted us to say

that he thinks most definitely not.

So is he correct?

And if he is, does that mean that the supermarkets are always

getting it right? As we started looking into this,

it soon became very clear that it's not simply an issue

about paying out a few extra pennies.

There's also a real concern about the risk of food poisoning.

Before we started having to pay for carrier bags,

UK shoppers used more than 8 billion of them every year.

That's nearly 130 bags for every one of us

and most of them ended up in landfill.

So in terms of reducing numbers,

the 5p charge has been a resounding success.

Since its introduction in Wales in 2011, Northern Ireland in 2013,

Scotland the following year, and finally England in 2015,

there's been a drop of between 66 and 85% in the number of bags being

used, depending on where you are in the UK.

But there are still some bags that you might expect to be given free.

Graham Sewell from Lincoln was left rather confused

after a trip to his local Waitrose in May of 2016.

I was buying my usual weekly shop of fillet steaks,

salmon fillets,

and when I got to the till, I asked,

can I have my free carrier bag for the raw meat and raw fish?

They said, "No, we have to charge you for that."

Surprised that Waitrose would refuse him a free bag to keep his raw meat

separate from the rest of his shopping,

Graham asked to see the supervisor.

She reiterated what the assistant had told me

and suggested I wrote to Waitrose customer services, which I did,

and I got a reply back, effectively saying that their staff

had been told to charge for all carrier bags

and that there are no exceptions, because it's easier for the staff

to have a simple rule to follow,

rather than following the spirit of the law.

Well, Graham wasn't happy with that,

although in fact the law around bagging raw meats

isn't entirely clear.

Government guidelines state that supermarkets can supply

free carrier bags for uncooked foods that could potentially be harmful.

Equally, however, they are able to charge for them if they want to.

But for Graham, this isn't about the pennies involved.

He is worried that if you put other foods

in a bag with the uncooked ones,

or re-use a bag that has previously had raw food in it,

there could be a real danger.

The biggest risk for me, and I think for all of the public,

is that wherever you buy raw meat and raw fish, bacteria will escape.

If you then put other food into those carrier bags,

then you will be eating those bacteria, and you will be ill.

Well, when we asked some other shoppers whether they felt,

like Graham, that they should be given a free carrier for raw meat,

the results were a bit of a mixed bag.

It's important to keep meat separate from the other produce

because of the bacteria it contains.

I think if your meat is packaged,

already packaged,

I don't really think you need to have a separate bag.

If somebody is buying more than just raw meat,

they should be given a bag in which to put the raw meat

to help him to separate from other foodstuffs.

Now, reassuringly, since the introduction of the 5p bag charge,

there has been no reported rise in food poisoning incidents.

But that doesn't mean that cross-contamination through bags

isn't possible.

And it's an issue that some have been cautious about for many years.

I just feel a 5p bag charge shouldn't come before food safety

and the safety of my customers.

As a butcher, Beaton Lindsay says packing raw and cooked meats

in the same carrier bag is asking for trouble.

This is a high density bag.

These bags, as everyone knows, if you have got some stew in there,

if I left that in the fridge overnight,

it would be a wee puddle of blood.

That's because the bags are porous,

which means if there is a cooked product in that one and an uncooked

product in that one and they touch, there is contamination.

That's what we have been told

by the environmental health officers for years.

But the bag charge came along and people had the stigma

that you can't take a bag.

They were bringing their own bags in which have never been washed,

all going in the same bag, all touching.

We were worried that there would be some cross-contamination

and something bad could happen from this.

And of course, food poisoning from meat can be deadly serious.

In 1996, the 0157 strain of E. coli killed 21 people

after they ate meat at a church lunch from a butcher

in Wishaw, Lanarkshire.

The butcher had failed to separate raw and cooked meats,

leading to the worst single outbreak ever recorded.

So it's easy to see why Anthony Hilton,

professor of applied microbiology at Aston University,

was so keen to investigate more closely the potential dangers

of E. coli lurking in our shopping bags.

The issue is when you have a ready-to-eat food like a cream cake,

for example, which has touched a bag where raw meat has been.

it's the potential for those harmful bacteria to transfer across.

The professor's team carried out a study

which involved exposing carrier bags to E. coli

to see what happened to them over several days.

We decided to look at whether there could be a potential risk of reusing

a bag for multiple purposes that might result in it becoming

contaminated with bacteria that could then be transferred

from one item to another.

As it's those same concerns that inspired Graham to write to us.

We took him to meet Professor Hilton to see if the results

of the experiment can put his mind at rest.

Hello, Graham. Welcome to the lab.

-Hello, Anthony.

-I believe you've got some questions about the potential

risk of cross contamination when reusing plastic bags.

Yes. My main concern is with raw meat and raw fish,

where if the packaging leaks,

what happens inside the bag and what the risks are.

We've done some experiments looking at plastic bags.

We've deliberately inoculated small coupons of this plastic

with bacteria that you might find on raw meat.

We used E. coli, which is a common model

for salmonella and Campylobacter.

Then what we did is we tried to recover it

from the plastic bag every day, and in the case of E. coli,

it only survived probably about 12 to 24 hours.

So in that context,

the actual risk for that 24 hours is quite high, really,

but after that, it doesn't sustain for very long at all really.

What about if the bags are stored, say, in the boot of a car

in the winter, when it is near refrigerator temperature?

Would bacteria survive longer then?

They would. We did these experiments at room temperature.

At the time, that would have been about 21, 22 degrees.

What we know about bacteria is that they survive longer

at cooler temperatures.

So in the cool boot of a car, 8 degrees or something like that,

they'd probably last longer than they would at 21 degrees, yes.

So would present a higher risk?

It would present a higher risk in terms of the duration

that the bag was potentially going to cause cross-contamination, yeah.

So with the bacteria that do stay alive in the carrier bag,

what is the risk of transfer to the next set of shopping?

The actual transfer efficiency is very, very low.

Probably somewhere between 10% and 20% of what are there

will be transferred across, really.

You really need to have in the thousands

and up to tens of thousands of bacteria surviving in the bag

for you to get a recognisable amount coming over onto your hands

or onto other foods, sufficient to then to cause illness afterwards.

In other words, while the risk of cross-contamination is relatively low,

if you're in that 24-hour danger zone, it's not out of the question.

So bolstered by that knowledge,

we've asked Graham to visit three of the UK's leading supermarkets

to see which would offer him a free bag

if he bought some uncooked products.

Remember, they're not legally obliged to give you a bag for free,

but the government guidelines are clear

that nor do they have to charge if you're buying raw meat or fish.

First stop, Tesco,

which has posted on social media that if you buy loose fruit or veg,

in-store bakery items, or raw meat or fish from counters,

you're able to have a free, clear bag.

But that's not what Graham was offered.

That was Tesco's.

I bought two meat products and went to the till.

I was asked if I needed a bag, to which I said, "Yes, I did."

I was then offered either the 5p disposable bag

or a 10p bag for life.

No option of a free bag.

Asda is next up for Graham,

and although we couldn't find any officially published policy on this,

they did offer a refund via social media

to a customer unhappy about being charged to bag raw meat products.

Here we are. It's now been two supermarkets

and both have had the same result,

where I've been charged 5p for a disposable bag.

So far, not so good, but last on Graham's hit list is Morrisons.

Again, social media posts suggest it does give bags away for free,

provided they are being used solely for raw products.

Add any other produce to the bag and you will be charged,

and this store did stick to that policy.

Well, that was Morrisons,

and they say it's the exception that proves the rule.

The girl on the till scanned the carrier bag in.

but the till automatically deducted the 5p,

so they do provide free carrier bags for meat and fish.

Fantastic news.

So of the three supermarket branches he visited,

only Morrisons was prepared to give Graham a free bag

for his raw meat products.

Asda and Tesco both insisted he pay the 5p charge,

going against what they have previously said on the matter.

When we contacted the two stores,

neither Asda nor Tesco chose to comment on Graham's experience,

though Asda did tell us that its policy is to offer

free small bags or carrier bags for raw meat, fish and poultry.

We also contacted Waitrose,

the store that had prompted Graham's initial complaint.

It said that food safety is its top priority

and it's ensuring that bags for raw meat and fish

are more widely available in its branches.

It says they should now be available on all its checkouts.

But if the supermarket's policy on this can be a bit hit and miss,

Professor Hilton says there is a piece of kit

you can rely on to carry uncooked foods

without worrying that there might be a contamination risk,

and that's an antimicrobial bag.

They have been demonstrated to reduce any contamination that might

contaminate the bag. It could be that the bags are a good investment

because they tend to be reusable bags of a good quality,

and as a result of that, it means you can have

a little bit of confidence in between multiple uses

that you're not accumulating bacteria in there.

We first highlighted one such bag produced by a company

called Biomaster on this programme a couple of years ago.

What we're looking to do is lower the risk.

So if there is bacteria there,

our product will permanently get rid of the bacteria on the surface.

The bag has a small layer of silver designed to prevent any bacteria

from growing on it, and its inventor Paul Morris has no doubt

that we should be just as cautious handling raw meat

while we're doing the shopping as we are in the kitchen.

You wouldn't let your children play with a raw chicken breast,

but if it's in a trolley, people just assume it's safe.

You either disinfectant the bag after every use,

which people don't tend to do, people like to be lazy,

or why not have an antibacterial bag for life,

which costs a few pence more than a normal bag

and actually gives you that protection then that you're not

going to spread bacteria from one shopping trip to another?

M&S is the first supermarket to sell these antimicrobial bags

at their checkouts, and they cost around £1.10.

But other stores are doing their bit to try and help

customers prevent cross-contamination.

Tesco, for example, is putting labels in its bags for life

so that shoppers can be sure to only re-use them

for specific produce,

rather than going from raw meat one day to vegetables the next.

But Graham still maintains that the best solution for the problem

would be for all supermarkets to consistently supply bags

for raw meats or other risky foods free.

And it's clear that he won't ever be happy paying a charge,

however small, for something that he considers to be so essential.

I understand that the money doesn't go to the supermarkets

because it goes to the charities, but for the sake of...what?

Less than a fraction of a penny per carrier bag,

they would do a great service to their customers

in terms of health and safety by offering it.

Still to come on Rip Off Britain:

How clean are the highchairs in restaurants?

We reach for the swabs with some hygiene tests we sent straight

to a lab, and just wait till you hear the results.

I found really high numbers of faecal bacteria

in the areas we sampled.

These bacteria are the most likely to make you sick.

Now, a number of you have contacted us about a food safety issue

that's very close to home.

As we've reported before,

although freezing food is a very effective and efficient way

of preserving what we eat, there's often a deal of confusion

about what's safe to put in the freezer

and what could potentially be dangerous.

And some of you say that the labelling on certain products

gives a very muddled message on what you should and shouldn't be doing.

So, to freeze or not to freeze?

Once again, that is the question.

In the last series of Rip Off Britain: Food,

we explored how home freezing can affect meat after some of you

raised concerns about how long it's safe to keep.

In the back of my freezer, I found these sausages

which are about six months old and I don't think we will eat them now.

They'll either go in the bin or they go in the dog.

Well, we had some bad news for Wilma's dog,

but good news for Wilma herself.

Our experts revealed that meat is perfectly safe to keep

in the freezer for a long time

and certainly much longer than the three months

often advised on the labels.

The taste and texture might be affected the longer it stays there,

but it certainly shouldn't be dangerous.

But it seems the packaging guidelines

on how or even whether to freeze some other everyday foods

are still leaving some of you cold.

Sometimes the information on freezing products is confusing,

and in a lot of cases,

products don't have information on them about freezing.

I do find freezing instructions...

a bit confusing.

I don't think it's safe to put food in the freezer

that's already been defrosted,

because it might have become contaminated.

Well, there's plenty of apparently conflicting information

knocking about on what can and can't be kept

in these sub-zero storage chambers.

In fact, when the Food Standards Agency conducted a survey last year,

36% of those asked believed food could become unsafe to eat

if left in the freezer, and 43% thought products

could only be frozen on the day they were bought.

But for retired engineer John Storey,

it's the question of whether you can refreeze particular foods

that's left him well and truly baffled.

We've always had a rule that we've worked to and we've passed down

from our parents and grandparents,

that you should only freeze food that has never been frozen before.

So being keen to make sure no food goes to waste,

John always checks the packaging

to make sure which foods are recommended to go in his freezer.

The labels we specifically check for is the little snowflake on the back

of the pack. We read the instructions carefully

to make sure that what we are getting

is food that is suitable for freezing.

Well, in May 2016,

John bought some smoked haddock fillets from his local Co-op,

with the full intention of freezing them.

When he got home and looked at the label in more detail,

he was left all at sea about what to do.

What it said was that the fish had previously been defrosted,

and that straightaway was a question,

because on the back of the pack there was the snowflake

which said suitable for freezing.

On the front, it said it had already been frozen.

So I had a basic conflict.

What do I do now?

Based on John's understanding that refreezing food

would make it unsafe to eat,

he and his wife decided they'd better not risk it.

So to avoid wasting what they'd bought, they ate it that night.

But when the issue continued to play on his mind,

John decided to contact the supermarket, which, after checking,

assured him that the previously defrosted fish was safe to refreeze.

That still left me confused.

The ground rules have now shifted.

So I'm now no longer able to make a general judgment

of what is safe and what is not safe.

John has since found similar wording saying his fish had been

previously frozen on a package of smoked haddock he bought in Tesco,

only on this occasion it was in very small print

on the back of the packaging.

Having since found other products where the labelling on the back

is in small print telling me all of this

is even more disturbing than it was by finding it

on the major label on the front.

John remains baffled as to whether those words on the label

mean he shouldn't refreeze his fish.

But why is working out this kind of thing so difficult

for a nation that's had freezers in our kitchens for the last 40 years?

Well, food writer and historian Angela Clutton

says since ads like these appeared on screen back in the 1950s...

No defrosting in the freezer and no defrosting in the refrigerator.

..the freezing process has come a long way.

We have food, meat and fish particularly,

being imported from elsewhere.

It may be defrosted on its way to our shops, having been frozen

at source to keep it in as good a state as possible

for as long a time as possible. What can be confusing for the consumer,

particularly somebody who maybe grew up in the 1970s,

much more familiar with the kind of freezing processes then,

is how to use that meat and fish which has already been frozen,

already been defrosted.

So, for the first time, those people are having to really look

at the packaging to get some guidance about how they should

really be using their freezer.

Refreezing food across the board

is not something the Food Standards Agency recommends.

That's because, just as John had feared,

in some cases it can lead to a higher risk of food poisoning

due to the fact that when frozen food is thawed,

bacteria can multiply rapidly.

Freezing it again doesn't kill those germs.

They just become inactive until the food is defrosted,

when they can multiply once more to potentially harmful levels.

But is that the case with refreezing fish?

Despite Tesco's reassurances,

John still feels unclear on the right thing to do.

So to help him and the rest of us know what really is the best way

to store our fish, we're going to get to the bottom

of that seemingly conflicting advice.

The story starts thousands of miles away from the UK mainland,

far out to sea.

More than half of the UK's seafood,

just over 700,000 tonnes,

is imported from abroad or landed in the UK by foreign ships.

To keep the fish that's caught so far from our shores

in tiptop condition,

many vessels freeze their catch at sea.

It's stored in large holds on board at temperatures of minus 30 degrees,

a coldness so extreme that it stops bacterial spoilage in its tracks.

Alaska supplies 32,000 tonnes of the UK's fish.

And Rebecca Wilson from the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute

says that fast freezing at sea

is the industry's way of keeping food at its best.

Because it's put on ice before any bacteria can develop,

when the fish thaws,

it's essentially like a regular chilled product.

It's normally actually frozen between within four and six hours

of it being caught, and the actual freezing process itself

takes between an hour and three hours.

That is actually the fastest way that you could possibly

catch and freeze a fish.

What that does is it protects the fish

and it keeps it fresh throughout the time that it travels over to the UK.

And if you think that's efficient,

some vessels do much more than simply freezing the fish whole.

The big daddies of the fishing world, known as the factory ships,

have complete processing facilities on board, too,

so that after catching the fish, they fillet it before freezing it.

On fishing vessels, they all have temperature probes,

and they will maintain and check those temperatures

on a very regular basis.

When fish that's been frozen at sea is landed,

it's taken into cold storage or thawed, processed and packed

in temperature-controlled conditions.

It's then ready to be sent out to wholesale suppliers,

supermarkets and restaurants.

The industry uses the term refreshed to describe fish frozen at sea,

then thawed and sold chilled.

Fish that has been refreshed then appears on our supermarket shelves

and you'll see that as chilled fish,

but it might previously have been frozen

at very cold industrial temperatures.

Here at Billingsgate Market in East London,

much of the fish is refreshed or brought in frozen

from a range of suppliers.

CJ Jackson from the market's seafood school teaches people

how to prepare and cook a variety of fish, day in, day out.

And while she has no doubt that refreshed fish is perfectly safe

to refreeze, she'd be more inclined to buy it frozen

and chuck it straight into the freezer, because in her opinion,

taking any fish from chilled to frozen in a domestic freezer

will affect the taste and texture.

If I was to buy a piece of fish that had been previously frozen

and you could refreeze, I would be hesitant about putting it back

into the freezer, because frozen at minus 18,

which is what a domestic freezer is set at, is a slow process.

People put it in the freezer, forget about it,

and then think six months later,

"Oh, I've got that nice bit of fish."

Chances are, after six months, the flavour is gone,

the texture is not so good.

So I'd buy it frozen and store it frozen

and then defrost it myself at home.

200 miles away in Cheshire,

cookery school owner Brian Mellor agrees that the only issue with

refreezing fish is how it might end up altering the texture.

But if you're looking to save money,

he says that compromise can be a small price to pay.

I think when you look at the price of things like fish and meat,

and you're paying good money for it,

if you've got some left over or you're not eating it,

then you want to freeze it, because you want to save yourself some money.

OK, the quality might change just a little bit,

but I think it's perfectly fine to do.

But while it may be fine to refreeze fish,

are the supermarkets making this clear enough on the packaging?

John certainly didn't think so,

so we got in touch with Tesco and the Co-op,

the supermarkets where he bought the fish that left him confused,

to ask about their labelling.

Both stores were clear that their fish is frozen and defrosted in line

with industry standards and kept in controlled conditions,

and as a result it poses no health risk to customers.

Additionally, the Co-op explained that it's legally obliged

to declare if the fish has been previously frozen

by stating "defrosted" on the pack.

The supermarket said that it also advises on the packet

if a product can be refrozen,

to let customers know that it is absolutely safe to freeze.

And Tesco also stressed that following the on-pack guidelines

ensures the safety and quality of the food.

So if, like John, you've ever wondered

about the right thing to do when considering freezing fish

that the label says has previously been frozen,

it's good to know that while freezing at home

might affect the texture,

it really shouldn't do you any harm.

And as far as Brian Mellor's concerned,

that makes it a great way to prevent waste and save money.

Don't be afraid to use your freezers.

They've always been a fantastic method of preservation.

We've already seen the price of food is starting to rise,

so I think freezing is a great way of not wasting food

and managing a household budget.

Now, over the years, we've several times reported on the cleanliness

of places where we eat,

sometimes doing our own tests as well.

This series, we've done it again

after hearing concerns from parents and grandparents

about the state of some of the highchairs in establishments

that otherwise have the highest marks for hygiene standards.

Well, we took several samples, hoping that they would come back

squeaky-clean, but sadly, not all of them did.

And what we found may well mean that you'll take a closer look

at any highchair that you might be offered.

Shall we make a cup of tea?

Kate Paul from Southampton loves taking her two-year-old son Harrison

out for a bite to eat.

Like most mums, she's keen to ensure

that everything is clean and hygienic for her little one.

Do I get the jug?

But she doesn't always consider the highchairs come up to scratch.

I think most parents nowadays carry around a pack of wipes

and we would use the wipes that we use on our baby's skin

just to wipe down the highchair.

But on a recent trip to a cafe that is part of a chain,

Kate says she was given a highchair that needed far more than a quick

freshen up with her trusty wipes.

In fact, she was pretty horrified by the state it was in.

The straps were absolutely caked in old food

and you could see that they hadn't been washed for months.

I mean, you see some filthy highchair,

you just think it is just awful that you've got to put your child in here

because as a parent, you are conditioned to protect your child

as best you can.

And here you are, putting your child

in something that looks really filthy.

After making a complaint about the cleanliness of the highchair

to the staff, and contacting the company's head office,

Kate accepted a £10 goodwill voucher,

but she was surprised to discover later that the branch

had been awarded a hygiene rating of 4, or good,

from the local authority,

whose job it is to ensure that food outlets meet the regulations

set out by the Food Standards Agency, or FSA for short.

As we reported before,

the FSA's rating scheme checks if places serving food

meet the necessary standards both in the kitchen and front of house.

But Kate reckons however clean a top scoring establishment

might be overall, its highchairs should be looked at

a little more closely as well,

and she's got serious concerns about what germs might be present.

Now, like Kate, I also like to eat out, and fortunately,

so too do my children and grandchildren.

And although within our family, we don't actually need highchairs

at the moment, but the very thought that they could not be

cleaned properly and full of bacteria

fills me with absolute terror.

Particularly when you think that young children

can pick up infections so easily.

So I've come to a playgroup where parents and grandparents

meet up at the start of every week, and I'm keen to know

what the people here think of the cleanliness of the highchairs

they are given when they are out and about,

and if, like Kate, they think there's room for improvement.

He comes out, look.

Whoa! It's very good.

So, Jen, we're obviously talking about highchairs.

So, I'm sure you've used them a lot over the years.

So, have you found them always to be quite clean, or...?

Yeah, a lot of bacteria.

Do you bring the wipes with you everywhere you go?

I've always got wipes in my handbag.

Have you ever seen a highchair or...

-That's dirty?

-Yes.

-Yes.

-How dirty?

-Very dirty.

To the point where you think...

With food down the sides of it, everywhere.

Do you go out eating with your children?

Not very often, as it's quite hard work, but, yeah, we do,

we go for lunches, really, with grandparents.

And so, therefore, would you have cleaned the highchair yourself?

I would clean it even if I thought it was clean,

just because I want it to be clean for Henry.

Well, it's clear that the members of the group I spoke to have one thing

in common, they all say they've had to clean the highchairs

in restaurants and cafes themselves

before allowing their child to use them,

which as well as being rather annoying does raise questions

over whether they are right to be concerned

about what a mucky highchair might be harbouring.

And certainly, Dr Chloe James, a medical microbiologist,

believes that while poor hygiene standards in food outlets

put everyone at some risk, there are reasons

why it's a particular issue for young children.

It's important that highchairs are kept clean,

because children naturally touch surfaces

and put their hands in their mouths a lot.

Young infants also have a less well-developed immune system

and so they are more susceptible to bacteria that cause disease,

and they are more likely to get a lot more sick than adults.

But Dr James also says it's important to remember

that no restaurant is going to be able to keep

everywhere completely germ-free.

Even if the restaurant has got a good cleaning regime in place,

you would still expect to find some bacteria.

There's no such thing as a completely sterile environment.

Lots of dishcloths are used that can carry bacteria on them

and then bacteria is also going to be transferred from staff

and customers' skin onto any surface.

Well, to try and tackle problems like that,

a company in America has spent the last 20 years

developing materials that inhibit the growth of bacteria,

and now they've applied that technology to highchairs,

and that's because after doing tests into highchair cleanliness

they turned up some pretty filthy results.

Special scientist Ivan Ong was involved in the study.

We were pretty surprised by the high level of contamination.

We went to four locations

and we looked at six highchairs where we sampled the seat area,

the strap, the T-bar, where the legs go in,

and the armrests.

So in all chairs we found pretty high levels of bacteria.

Were you shocked at some of the results?

Yeah, we were shocked at the amounts of bacteria we found.

Some of the chairs were extremely dirty, with E. Coli

and coliform bacterias that actually smell when we plated these things..

Not good.

Yeah, you have to be careful.

I judge a restaurant by a toilet and if I see that the toilet is dirty,

I'll be honest with you, I don't go back, because I think, well,

if the toilet is that dirty and uncared for,

-what's the kitchen like?

-Right.

And to give you a shocking perspective,

what we found is the average toilet seat in a restaurant

is much, much, much cleaner than a highchair seat for a young child.

So, 17-40 times cleaner.

That is unbelievable.

Certainly a shock.

Well, as yet, there's been no comparable research done in the UK,

so to get a snapshot of the cleanliness of highchairs over here,

we've collected some samples of our own.

We selected five branches of family-friendly high-street chains.

They all have highchairs and each of them proudly displays

a 5-star FSA hygiene rating.

Our team of researchers went out with swabs

and they, for example, took a swab of this strap

and of armrests and things like that.

And immediately, those swabs were sent to a laboratory.

We also planned to swab the highchair trays,

but, in fact, all the establishments we visited

had highchairs designed to be pulled up to the table instead.

So we swabbed the table directly in front,

as well as the highchairs' arms and straps.

The swabs were then examined

by microbiologist Dr Margarita Gomez Escalada

from Leeds Beckett University.

She's done similar tests for us before,

most memorably perhaps in our last series,

when she found faecal contamination on the ice we'd taken

from a well-known chain.

Now she's looking to see what kind of bacteria

and just how much of it is present on the highchair we were given

in each of our five establishments.

Because of the fact that these bacteria found in a food environment

and they can find nutrients to grow,

they can potentially grow in numbers relatively quickly.

Dr Gomez Escalada is testing for two things.

Firstly, the levels of everyday bacteria,

which generally speaking isn't likely to do any harm,

but does indicate how clean an establishment is.

And secondly, the more worrying faecal coliforms,

otherwise known as gut bacteria.

First up, the overall bacteria count.

That gives Margarita a reading as to how good a restaurant is

at keeping their highchairs clean.

The numbers obtained of bacteria are high across the board,

which indicates a low level of hygiene.

One highchair was cleaner than the others

and not considered a concern, but overall,

Margarita's verdict on the others

was that they were not sufficiently clean.

In particular, she found some of her highest readings on the arms

and straps of the chairs, rather than the tables in front,

suggesting that the highchair may have had less cleaning attention

than the table surface,

and one swab result on a strap particularly stood out.

The highest was 386 bacteria per hundred centimetres squared.

This is almost a 20-fold difference from one to the other.

Which increases the risk of potentially getting sick,

because it shows that there's a lack of hygiene.

And in one of the highchair arms, the levels were even worse,

a 900 bacteria count.

Results like this mean that, as far as Margarita is concerned,

that the cleaning regimes for highchairs in the restaurants

we swabbed simply were not up to scratch.

The numbers of bacterias that we have found in the highchairs

indicate that there's not a sufficient level of cleanliness.

I think that they need to be cleaned more often.

And if that sounds bad for levels of general bacteria, well,

what our other tests turned up in one restaurant of the five

was even worse.

I found really high numbers of faecal bacteria

in the areas we sampled.

We found 15 faecal bacteria per 100 centimetres squared

in the table,

and 160 bacteria per 100 centimetres squared in the arm of the chair.

Well, that's the bacteria associated with poo to you and me.

And not only does that sound rather horrible,

those bugs can be really bad for your health too.

Now, the fact that these are faecal bacteria that come from the gut

makes it particularly relevant,

because these bacteria are the most likely to make you sick,

because they are transmitted by consumption.

160 bacteria, it's pretty high,

and in my view,

it's high enough for it to be concerning.

It's a very worrying find.

Faecal bacteria living on the arms of a highchair

within easy reach of a child.

Our results indicate that some highchairs are not clean enough.

And that opinion was backed up by Dr James when we showed her

what we'd found.

Most gut bacteria don't cause disease, and in fact,

most of them are highly beneficial.

But we can't rule out the fact that some of the bacteria

isolated in this study could cause disease.

In particular, we'd be worried about diarrhoeal disease

that very young infants could suffer more severe symptoms,

which would be a worry for parents.

Perhaps one of the greatest concerns is how on earth

the faecal matter got onto the table and highchair in the first place.

Staff or customers that may not have washed their hands properly

and then touched those surfaces

may have transferred gut bacteria that way.

The other possibility is that dishcloths can be breeding grounds

for bacterial growth, and so the action of wiping down surfaces

can sometimes transfer bacteria onto the surface from the dishcloths.

So I would be a little bit worried about that.

It's an indication that the hygiene practice in that restaurant

could probably be improved.

When we put our results to the restaurant where we found

the faecal bacteria, it wouldn't comment,

so there was no explanation for the contamination.

But the restaurant where the highest levels of bacteria were detected

told us it was taking our findings very seriously

and the results have triggered a fundamental review

to ensure that its highchairs are appropriately sanitised.

But whilst we may never get to the bottom

of how those worrying levels of bacteria

got on the children's highchairs,

in these cases, what our testing does seem to have highlighted

is that even if a restaurant has a good hygiene rating,

the highchairs are not always spotless.

And Dr Gomez Escalada says that giving them a quick once-over

with a wet wipe is doing the right thing.

Look at the highchair and scrutinise the highchair.

And if you find any food debris or it's sticky,

then you can either clean it yourself with a wet wipe

or actually ask a waiter to clean it for you.

As for Kate, whose concerns kicked off our investigation,

she feels very strongly that this is an area where restaurants and cafes

need to do better and she'd love to find a way to help them do it.

I just think there's got to be a better way of dealing with it.

We've got to up the standard somewhere.

And if I could invent some sort of straps

that were really easy to clean, or that you could take off

the highchair really easily for these restaurants and cafes

to wash them properly, then I would.

Well, that's just about it from us for today, and I have to say,

what an eye-opener it's been.

I was really genuinely shocked by some of the test results

from those highchairs. We only took a really small sample,

so to have two out of five come back with high rates of bacteria,

and of course one with the faecal matter,

was incredibly disappointing and really, really worrying.

Absolutely disgusting, I'd say.

Well, certainly a wake-up call to the entire catering industry

to be ultra-vigilant about hygiene.

It really shouldn't be up to the customer,

like Kate, who we saw earlier,

to give everything a wipe before they sit down to eat.

And why should they? It's basic cleanliness, after all.

But please remember that if you've got concerns about food safety,

or indeed any other subject for that matter,

then do get in touch with our team,

because they are always keen to hear your experiences,

so that we can perhaps include them in a future programme.

But in the meantime, I'm afraid that's it for today.

We'll see you again very soon.

Until then, from all of us, goodbye.

-Bye-bye.

-Goodbye.