Pardon?

23 cafes, restaurants and kitchens in Conwy have been allowed to stay open despite being branded with the lowest possible scores for safety and food hygiene.

Environmental health inspectors have raised serious concerns about low standards at 30 eateries in Wrexham, 23 in Conwy, 28 in Flintshire, 35 in Gwynedd, and 14 in Denbighshire. Yet all were told they could keep serving customers – and given between six-months and a year to clean up, before their next inspection.

Last night calls were made for a re-vamp of the system, which means officials can only shut a restaurant or take-away immediately if there is a “imminent risk to public health”.

Of course, it's judging what constitutes an "imminent risk to public health” that's the tricky one. Sweaty, raw beef burgers, dripping their little passports of death onto the fresh and innocent-looking lettuce leaves stored immediately below are a pretty obvious indicator that the owner needs to take a long holiday. But few indicators are as obvious as a series of cat pelts strung up outside the back door over a vat of something decidedly dubious, simmering happily away in the summer's heat, or festering gobbets of something slimy, lurking hopefully in the 'fridge. It would be nice if they were.

But inspectors are required to judge each place on its merits and - irritatingly for the 'Handbook on nasty 'orrible eating places' - no two venues are identical. So what they do is look at practice - hand washing, storage, organisation, surfaces - and make their assessment based on two factors: is the place designed so it can be cleaned easily and, secondly, is it and the staff being cleaned properly?

Incredible as it may seem (or not, if you've worked in a kitchen) the weakest link is always the staff. Fingers that seem bent on polar-type explorations of the server's nasal passages one minute are bringing you that fresh scone and cream the next, whilst the sound of someone suffering a paroxysmal sneezing fit in the kitchen may well be followed by the exit of a waiter bearing a cup of coffee towards you, which abruptly assumes the visage of a harbinger of death, or a 'get dead soon' card from the local Visigoth society.

All of which makes rational assessment of eating places something of a lottery. However, it does seem that a couple of things could do with changing. First - there should be publicity from the council - all councils - giving the results of inspections. That way, you at least have a fighting chance of seeing if the little floating things in your piña colada are alive and out to get you, or merely an exotic touch, added by an imaginative barman. Secondly, there should be far more detailed inspections for any facilities that use raw meat and eggs. This already happens to some extent, but it needs to be tighter. Raw meat and eggs should be viewed in the same light as drunks after midnight; almost always okay if handled properly, but the consequences of not doing so can have serious repercussions.

After all, surely we deserve the chance to eat ourselves to death, instead of being bushwhacked en route?