The Dutch food safety board closed 168 restaurants for poor hygiene in 2017 and placed a further 279 under extra supervision, RTL said on Tuesday.

A company is closed down if it had been fined at least three times and may only reopen on the say so of inspectors, RTL, which first asked for the information a year ago, said.

Vermin such as mice and cockroaches was found in almost half the 447 restaurants and cafes in the report and 40% were fined for poor food safety after high levels of bacteria were found in food samples.

NVWA spokesman Benno Bruggink told RTL that the organisation now has a better picture of where problematic restaurants and cafes are. ‘This means we don’t have to keep visiting the good ones and can pay more attention to the bad ones,’ he said.

One quarter of the restaurants on the inspectors’ blacklist were in Amsterdam, where mice, rats and cockroaches pose particular problems. Two in three fines handed out in Amsterdam were for vermin.

The broadcaster used freedom of information legislation to first apply for the information in January 2018 but the details were only released a year later.

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