Food Inspectors - Season 2

Enfield Council's food inspectors Mary and Claire visit a Chinese takeaway, where they discover a rabbit which belongs to the owner's daughter and is being kept in a food preparation area. They also find an area awash with mouse droppings and urine, and in an outside storage shed there are the remains of a dead rat or mouse.

Matt investigates a countryside crimewave which sounds like something out of the 18th century - animal rustling. Pigs, sheep and cows are being stolen, loaded into lorries and driven away to be illegally slaughtered. If it ends up in the catering industry we could be eating illegal, unsafe, stolen meat without even knowing it.

While food inspectors concentrate on businesses, most cases of food poisoning happen in people's homes or workplaces. Chris Hollins visits a fire station in Lincolnshire - the firefighters cook a tasty fry-up at the station, but there are dangers lurking in their kitchen. Our resident expert Ben gives the kitchen a once over and uses a gadget to test for bacteria.

Chris Hollins meets Darren, from Lancashire, who ate one mouthful of undercooked pork chop and ended up in hospital. He cooked the pork for five minutes and could tell it wasn't quite right but swallowed one piece. Three weeks later he woke with a headache and tingling in the corner of his face and within 48 hours he was in intensive care fighting for his life. He had contracted listeriosis, and the bacteria went to his brain - causing meningitis.

In the UK we devour 11.5 billion sandwiches every year. Making a sandwich may look simple but the lunchtime favourite is a potential breeding ground for lethal bacteria. Chris visits Raynor Foods in Chelmsford which prides itself on food safety and makes 32,000 sandwiches each day.

Food inspector Mandy from Gravesham Borough Council is on the trail of a Chinese takeaway.

Every food outlet in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is rated from zero to five with five being the cleanest. The takeaway Mandy inspects boasts a rating of four. But she finds fried chicken which has been left out of the fridge for six hours and a box which once contained raw, frozen food is now being used to store the cooked chicken.

In the food lab Chris meets secretary Sharon Sanderson from Halifax, who suffered from a very serious case of salmonella poisoning. Sharon ordered chicken and noodles from a noodle bar in Manchester - a decision she believes led her to be hospitalised with kidney failure.

Food inspector Russell from Reigate and Banstead Council visits a pizza delivery company where he finds fridges at the wrong temperature for food safety, a staff member washing his hands in the food preparation area and a box of chicken wings left underneath the pizza oven to defrost.

While food inspectors concentrate on businesses, most cases of food poisoning happen in people's homes or workplaces. Our resident expert Ben visits the home of pet lover Linda in Tonbridge, Kent. Linda has a horse, a pony and a cat and treats them as her family. But not everyone is keen on Linda's love of animals - her daughter Faye refuses to eat at the house when she visits, because she doesn't think the kitchen is clean and she instead brings a packed lunch with her.

And Chris visits pie factory Pooles of Wigan. Chris is given a guided tour to show him just how they make a perfect pie while also ensuring food safety and hygiene levels are maintained.

Matt Allwright visits Felixstowe, more than 40 per cent of Britain's import export trade goes through the port including five million tonnes of food. Suffolk Coastal Port Health Authority's inspectors are responsible for checking the foods which arrive including products from Japan, produced near the Fukishima nuclear disaster, which are tested for radiation, and a huge consignment of chilli powder from India.

At Gatwick Airport the UK Border Force are responsible for checking passengers' bags and ensuring that no illegal foodstuffs enter the UK. Sniffer dog Bindy is on the hunt for meat and dairy products which could have come from outside the EU. She sniffs out cheese, meat and butter, all of which are confiscated. A bag containing grasshoppers, though, is perfectly legal to bring into the UK in small quantities only.

The Food Inspectors' resident expert, Ben Milligan, visits a family home in Holmforth, near Huddersfield, which appears very clean and tidy. Colette has three small children including a one-year-old. Colette takes extra precautions with her youngest child and sterilises his bottles, dummies and spoons. Ben tests for bacteria levels and finds that the work surfaces aren't being properly cleaned - Colette uses baby wipes which don't kill the bacteria. The fridge is immaculate but Ben advises her not to overstock it. Packing a fridge to its limits means the air can't circulate to keep it cold. And the baby's bottle also contains bacteria, even though it has been sterilised, so Ben demonstrates how to wash the bottles more thoroughly.

Chris Hollins meets Carole from Exeter who went out for lunch, ate a ham, cheese and tomato panini and ended up in intensive care suffering from E. coli. Carole is convinced, but has been unable to prove, that the E. coli came from the sandwich. Ten months on Carol has lost 80 per cent of her kidney function and suffers from dizzy spells.

Newham food hygiene officer Matt investigates 'beds in restaurants' - the alarming practice of workers sleeping in kitchens. He has found 12 cases of people living in kitchens in the past few years. Jenny, from the Chartered Institute for Environmental Health, says that anyone sleeping in a kitchen presents a health risk to any customer.

It is estimated that there are more than one million cases of food poisoning every year in the UK. And almost half of these are the result of dodgy cooking by family and friends. Chris visits the Brixton home of Dave and Rich, who are cooking that Great British favourite, a roast lamb dinner, for their friends.

Our resident expert Ben casts his eye over the kitchen and offers advice on how to cook the lamb and vegetables safely. Lamb can contain E. coli on its surface but properly searing the outside of the meat will kill any bacteria on the surface.

But when Ben inspects the fridge he finds cheddar cheese which is way past its sell-by date, mouldy mushrooms and a bag of salad which is swimming in water, all of which need to be binned.

Matt visits a farmers' market in Taunton, Somerset, along with Carol, the head of training at the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health. Matt meets some of the stallholders and quizzes them on the lengths they go to in order to store and sell their produce safely.

And he visits a farm in Devon, where artisan producer Donna has been rearing her pigs for nine years. She also makes pork salamis which are dried and not cooked. Matt tries his hand at making a salami sausage and learns about the ingredients Donna uses to preserve the meat.