If you’ve ever wondered what lurks in the kitchens of a cruise ship serving thousands of meals a day, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a rather thorough answer for you.
P&O Cruises recently had one of its vessels inspected under the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Programme, a rigorous scheme that scrutinises everything from food storage temperatures to the cleanliness of crew quarters. The programme scores ships out of 100, and anything below 86 is considered a failing grade.
The inspection covers an almost comically exhaustive list of areas: potable water systems, swimming pools, food preparation surfaces, waste management, and even the personal hygiene practices of kitchen staff. Inspectors don’t just glance around; they take swabs, check temperatures with calibrated probes, and comb through documentation.
Why does a US health agency inspect British cruise ships? Because the VSP applies to any vessel carrying 13 or more passengers that calls at a US port, which covers a significant chunk of the global cruise fleet, including ships based out of Southampton that do transatlantic or Caribbean itineraries.
P&O Cruises, which is owned by Carnival Corporation and carries around 1.8 million passengers a year, operates a fleet of ships that regularly sail into American waters. Getting a strong score isn’t just a regulatory box-tick; it’s a genuine signal to passengers about the standards on board.
“Hygiene on cruise ships is something passengers increasingly research before booking,” one travel industry analyst noted recently. “A CDC score has become a shorthand people actually trust.”
It’s worth keeping in mind that cruise ships are essentially floating cities, compressing the logistical complexity of a large hotel, several restaurants, and a leisure complex into a hull that also happens to be moving. Maintaining consistent hygiene standards across that environment is genuinely demanding work.
P&O has not publicly commented on the specifics of the inspection findings, but the results are freely available on the CDC’s website for anyone curious enough to look before they book their next getaway.
Whether a hygiene score influences your choice of cruise line is a personal call, but with norovirus outbreaks still making headlines every winter season, it’s probably not the worst thing to check.
