Malama Meals gets cease-and-desist order

The state Department of Health’s Food Safety Branch has issued a cease-and-desist order to Ahmad Ramadan doing business as Malama Meals at 91-100 Farrington Highway. The operation was preparing and providing meals on Oahu, Kauai and Molokai.

“The operation had multiple food safety issues as it prepared and packaged hot meals on Oahu and shipped them to the neighbor islands without proper temperature controls,” said Peter Oshiro, chief of the Food Safety Branch. “Without proper controls, the risk of an outbreak of food illness is high and could have a devastating impact especially on those who are elderly and have underlying conditions.”

In response to a complaint, the DOH conducted an inspection of the food operation Friday and observed numerous violations indicating the operator did not have active managerial control over food being produced.

Among the violations observed were food handlers not monitoring cooking food temperatures of poultry, food handlers not properly washing their hands, the hand-wash sink being used to store unclean items, no paper towels available at two separate hand-wash sinks and no soap available at one of them, and improper cooling of poultry.