A Saundersfoot restaurant operator has been fined £750 for food safety offences.
Luyen Van Nguyen, of the Sao Mai Dragon, in Brewery Terrace, pleaded guilty to food safety offences at Haverfordwest Magistrates Court on Monday.
Mr. Nguyen was convicted of failing to put in place a documented food safety management system and to implement controls critical for ensuring food safety, as well as for failing to protect food from the risk of contamination.
The offences were discovered when officers from the council's public protection division carried out a routine, unannounced food hygiene inspection on March 12 last year.
Subsequent revisits failed to demonstrate adequate improvements and when officers returned to find similar problems on October 1, formal proceedings were invoked.
Jeff Beynon, the council's food, safety and port health manager, said that while the offences were not the most serious he had seen, the business had failed to respond positively to both verbal and written advice - despite time spent by officers in 'coaching' the business on the subject of food safety management.
"Faced with these persistent problems of poor compliance, the authority was left with no alternative but to take legal proceedings," he said.
Clr. Ken Rowlands, cabinet member for the environmental and regulatory services, said it was essential that food businesses identified and controlled food safety risks within their business.
"Deficiencies in food safety management systems were found to be at the centre of the outbreak of E.coli O157 in South East Wales in 2005, and we will do everything we can as an authority to try and ensure that incidents such as this do not arise in the county," he said.
Mr. Nguyen entered a guilty plea and was fined £750, with costs of £1,250 awarded to the council.