Running cockroaches and hairy ice aboard luxury Queen Mary 2
One of the world’s most prestigious and expensive cruise liners, Cunard’s Queen Mary 2, has been called “filthy” five times in a US Government health report.
An unsavoury series of sanitation failings included human hair in the ice machine, “extremely dirty” water and floor tiling in the Minnows splash pool, chemicals stored near napkins and drinking utensils and food residue smeared on surfaces.
Inspectors discovered four adult cockroaches cavorting in a storage locker as well as four live fruit flies. Whether the fruit flies were with the cockroaches was not disclosed.
In what the US publication USA Today described as “an extremely rare occurrence for modern day cruise ships” the US health agency failed the 2620-passenger vessel. Inspectors from the US government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) pounced on the luxury cruise ship when it docked in New York on June 10.
As part of its Vessel Sanitation Program, the CDC conducts surprise cleanliness inspections twice annually. It grades ships on a percentage scale, with any score below 86 considered a fail. The CDC gave Queen Mary 2 a score of 84, noting also that lines dispensing draught beer in several bars (including the ship’s pub) were “heavily soiled”.
Britain’s Daly Mail newspaper quoted Cunard as calling the score “uncharacteristically low”. The ship normally scored more than 95 and had scored 100 on three occasions, Cunard said.
Written by : Peter Needham
