‘Mouse droppings were everywhere’: a day in the life of a food inspector

Sharon Nkansah has worked on the food safety frontline in Newham, London, for 10 years, and seen the good, bad and the ugly

When you’ve been a food safety inspector for as long as Sharon Nkansah, you know how to smell a rat.

“Last month, there was a place I inspected [where] I walked in and you could smell it,” she says. “You can smell mouse activity. They had droppings in fridges, where they have their sauces, where they have their cutlery; the droppings were everywhere. So I just said: ‘Pull the shutters down’.”

Related: Hospitals and care homes fail food safety inspections