A list containing 11 forbidden ingredients that must not be served to athletes or spectators at the Winter Olympics in Sochi has been sent to the games' organizing committee in an attempt to prevent outbreaks of food poisoning.
According to the document, sent by the Federal Service on Customer Rights, "caterers must not serve homemade beer, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, tvorog made from unpasteurized milk, either separately or in blini, dried fish or mushrooms."
Macaroni po-flotsky, a pasta dish similar to spaghetti bolognese, has also been outlawed.
The federal agency, headed by Gennady Onischenko, said that the list of banned products was taken directly from regulations on food safety adopted in 2001, which also state that "companies specializing in food services must implement SanPiN (Sanitary Norms and Rules). Violation of its requirements may be punished by fines of hundreds of thousands of rubles."
Although food outlets are obliged to follow SanPin regulations, some are finding ways of getting around the restrictions.
Alexander Ivanov, vice president of the Federation of Restaurateurs, used the example of macaroni po-flotsky, the preparation of which will be banned, "to prevent the occurrence and spread of infectious disease and mass outbreaks of poisoning."
"You won't find macaroni po-flotsky written on menus because restaurants will use a foreign name for the dish instead," Ivanov told Izvestia, which first reported about the food restrictions Monday.
He added that some sanitary norms have become outdated and need to be revised after food outlets adopted new technologies that current SanPin regulations have not yet taken into account.
Food safety at Sochi will be controlled by the organizing committee, Sochi-2014, although it has so far declined to say exactly how this will be done, other than to state that the official food safety codex will be followed.
Catering for the Olympic and Paralympic Games will require 15 contractors to serve up 967 products from 10 different food outlet formats, and provide 30,000 seats.
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