We downloaded every food hygiene rating in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and snapshots back to 2019. A quarter are over two years old, big brands are almost never marked down, franchised chicken shops and corner-shop fascias are, and customers who get ill almost never reach anyone who counts.
Britain swapped sugar for sweeteners in 2018 and has not measured what children drink since 2003. We read the cancer rulings, the regulators' files and the funding lines of the key studies. Industry paid for much of the reassurance. The evidence shows no cancer link. Nobody in the UK is checking.
Twenty-one people fell ill in a week and two died after a night out in March. A new genetic analysis by UKHSA and Oxford finds the strain had borrowed genes from harmless throat bacteria, and that the same changes may explain why it burned out.