News of the week in plain Finnish | Saturday 20.6.2026

Food safety

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Topic of the week

The topic of the program this time is food safety.

Food safety means that the food in stores is clean and safe to eat.

Health inspectors inspect grocery stores regularly.

Yle requested information about the inspections carried out by health inspectors in 2023-2025.

We will now tell you more about how S Group, K Group and Lidl survived the inspections.

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Authorities regularly inspect grocery stores. Here, the temperature of meat is measured at the sales counter. Photo: Johanna Erjonsalo / Yle

Lidl and S Group

Lidl received the best ratings among the retail groups.

There were almost no problems at all in Lidl stores.

Lidl is doing well because its stores do not have fresh fish or meat counters.

Lidl stores also do not have salad bars, where food can spoil more easily.

S Group’s sales also performed well.

In Prismas and S-markets, there were problems in only 2% of inspections.

K-Group

The most problems were in the K-Group stores.

There were errors or deficiencies in 7% of inspections in K-Group stores.

There were often problems with food temperatures and cleanliness.

Large K-Citymarkets in particular received poor ratings.

Health inspection data also shows that the K-Group’s results deteriorated over the course of three years.

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Fish and meat spoil easily. That’s why it’s important to keep them really cold at all times. Photo: Johanna Erjonsalo / Yle

Reasons for differences

Experts say that the big differences are due to how retail chains are managed.

At Lidl and the S Group, all stores have common and strict rules.

The situation is different in the K-Group.

Every K-retailer is an entrepreneur who runs their own store.

That is why the differences between different K-stores are large.

Cold chain

Proper food storage and cleanliness are important for human health.

For example, milk, meat and fish must always be kept cold.

This is called the cold chain, meaning that the products remain cold at all times.

If the store’s refrigerated shelf is too warm or the premises are dirty, food will start to spoil.

Dangerous bacteria begin to grow rapidly if the temperature is above +6 degrees.

Bacteria can cause food poisoning in humans.

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Packaged cold cuts must also be kept cold at all times. Inspections found shops where cold cuts were kept too warm. Photo: Johanna Erjonsalo / Yle

Repetition

The topic of this week’s news was food safety.

Let’s repeat the most important things.

Yle examined information on health inspections of grocery stores.

Lidl and S Group take good care of the cleanliness and temperature of the food. K Group stores had the most problems.

Keeping food refrigerated is important to prevent people from getting food poisoning.

This was the news of the week in plain Finnish. See you again, bye!