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The Czech Food Inspection Office has closed down 40 pubs, restaurants and food stores around the country in the past ten weeks due to poor hygiene, Czech Radio reported. The most common transgressions are dirt, mice droppings and insects in kitchens or storage facilities. A complete list of the institutions that failed to comply with health norms can be found on the web page of the food inspection office.

The Czech Republic is currently experiencing something of a boom in garlic production. Over the past five years, the area of garlic fields under cultivation has multiplied nearly ten times.

The first Czech edition of the international charity project Empty Bowls, aimed to raise both money and awareness in the fight to end hunger, will take place at Prague’s Café Jedna this Saturday. People can come and buy a bowl of soup and do a good deed at the same time. Ruth Fraňková spoke to Nina Rail, a potter and one of the organizers of the project and first asked about its history.

The average European throws out around one hundred kilos of foodstuffs every year, and the Czech Republic is no exception. For several years now, an initiative called Zachraň Jídlo or Save Food has been trying to prevent the enormous waste as well as raise Czechs’ awareness of the problem. Along with organising food donations, it attempts to provide information and solutions to all participants in the food chain, from producers to distributors and consumers.

Czechs have a reputation as some of the biggest meat eaters in Europe but their carnivorous habits could be taking a hit after a United Nations agency suggested that eating processed meats and red meats can seriously increase the chances of cancer.

A bill aimed at banning smoking at pubs and restaurants in the Czech Republic from the start of January now appears unlikely to be approved by that date, the news site iDnes.cz reported on Wednesday. Government MPs voted against the bill being included on the agenda of a lower house session this week, meaning it will not have time to make the statute books by the beginning of next year. Jiří Mihola, head of the parliamentary group of coalition party the Christian Democrats, told iDnes.cz that he would push for clarification on the cabinet’s position on the issue at its next meeting.

Tour company Eat With Locals allows visitors to Prague to do just that, taking them to restaurants and cafés they might never find on their own and giving them the lowdown on various aspects of Czech food culture and more. The firm was started last year by Lenka Pavlíčková, who has both a background in business and a deep passion for food and travel. When we spoke at a café on Wenceslas Square, I asked Pavlíčková what kind of people were signing up for the Eat With Locals tours.

Ten months after a new law on allergy labelling went into force, a third of Czech restaurants and delis are still failing to fully comply with it. The Food Inspection Office says that 37 percent of restaurants and eating places recently inspected either failed to provide the respective information on their menus or only gave it on request.

The Food Inspection Office says that over a third of Czech restaurants, delis and eateries are not complying with the law on allergy labelling which went into force in December of last year. The office says 37 percent of restaurants and eating places inspected either failed to provide the respective information on their menus or only gave it on request. According to the legislation food businesses are bound to provide information relating to 14 of the most common allergens, including eggs, milk, fish, molluscs and peanuts. While the information is now available on pre-packaged foods, restaurant and deli owners have not yet fully complied with the norm, arguing that it is obtrusive and confuses their diners who are generally not interested in the ingredients of their dishes.

Activists on Saturday prepared some 2,000 free servings of soup outside Prague's National Theatre to draw attention to the problem of food waste. Minestrone, potato soup and an Indian soup were all served after being cooked from less than attractive vegetables normally thrown away and not found in supermarkets. Activists aimed to show that perfectly good food is wasted daily which could instead be consumed.