Food safety scores will be publicly displayed at Queanbeyan eateries after the city adopted a "scores on doors" hygiene rating system that was abandoned by the ACT government.
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Queanbeyan City Council launched its Scores on Doors program, which rates food premises out of five stars based on hygiene standards, on Tuesday.
Certificates were issued to 17 restaurants in the area, including The Royal Hotel and The Millhouse, Hot Potch Café, Queanbeyan Leagues Club and Queanbeyan Diamond Chinese Restaurant, which all rated between three and five stars.
Queanbeyan Mayor Tim Overall said the council's environmental health officers had worked closely with businesses over the last six months to help them improve standards if they needed to.
Environment, Planning and Development director Mike Thompson said any certificate which showed less than five stars showed that business was willing to work with the council to bolster its food hygiene and score.
"This system is a real point of difference for patrons to be able to have some confidence that the business is regularly inspected by council.
"Food safety is very important as poor practices can lead to outbreaks of poisoning and can even be fatal."
Information about businesses taking part in the scheme will be available on the council's website.
Queanbeyan is the 47th local government area in NSW to implement the rating system.
It comes after the ACT government quietly scrapped the idea of a "scores on doors" system in Canberra earlier this year, despite strong support from Labor and the Greens in 2011 before the last election.
An ACT Health spokesman said the territory had "a robust and effective food hygiene and inspection regime".
He said while the directorate was aware that Queanbeyan Council had adopted the food hygiene scheme and any change within the territory was a decision for the government.
The territory's Chief Health Officer, Paul Kelly, previously said there had been a "range of reasons" behind the decision to get rid of the scheme and the government had decided there would be "better paths to follow to get the same outcome".
"Just to be clear, the outcome is that we want the people of the ACT or people visiting the ACT to be confident when they go to a restaurant they're eating safe food," he said.
Dr Kelly said alternative measures, such as translating ACT Health materials into different languages, "seem to be bearing fruit".
The decision was welcomed by hotels, clubs and the business chamber who felt the initiative would create extra regulations and requirements for business to comply with.
Labor and the Greens strongly supported a "scores on doors" system in Canberra before the 2012 election in response to concerns about the secrecy surrounding food safety breaches.
In 2014, a Newspoll of 1000 Canberrans found that 81 per cent backed the scheme at least "somewhat", while only 4 per cent opposed it.
A 10 per cent increase in the number of food businesses operating in the ACT in the past two years has corresponded with a jump in the number of improvement orders issued for food safety breaches.
