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Restaurateurs with guns, chefs wielding knives, and severed heads in bin bags. Life as a food inspector is a lot more fraught than you might think.

Emily Thomas meets three food safety officers from around the globe who reveal what it’s like to be one of the most feared people in the industry.

They have the power to close a restaurant. Some can even make arrests. No wonder they’ve got some stories that seem to belong more in a mafia film than a food show. And the danger doesn’t end there. It’s not just their lives at risk – but yours too. We hear about some of the unsavoury things that happen to our food behind kitchen doors - and the sneaky tactics used to conceal them.

(Photo: A rat peers into a cup. Credit: Getty Images/ Â鶹Éç)