Celebrities get into the restaurant biz, so celebrity followers are getting into the restaurant inspection biz.

After the New York Post reported this morning that Jay-Z's 40/40 Club piled up enough infractions during a recent health department inspection to shutter the place, celebrity news site, TMZ, cited a rep as saying, it was just bad luck because a refrigerator died just before the inspector showed up.

But Ron Berkowitz says the staff identified the problem immediately and had no intention of serving the food from that fridge. Berkowitz says the fridge was fixed by noon the next day and the club was permitted to re-open.

Except it was more than the fridge.

Other infractions included mixing salsa with bare hands, no thermometer or thermocouple, and inadequate personal cleanliness.

The refrigerator was at a rancid 60 degrees instead of 41 — jeopardizing the safety of 50 pounds of raw chicken wings, five pounds of raw shrimp and 100 turkey burgers, the sources said.

Five pounds of cooked mashed potatoes were left out at a temperature of 89 degrees, while 10 pounds of cooked rice and 50 turkey burgers were kept at 67 degrees.

All the hot foods should be at least 140 degrees, the sources said.

The club’s restaurant was immediately closed, and new patrons were barred from entering. Those already inside were allowed to remain.

“If you have a walk-in place with food like this, you put a hell of a lot of people at risk,” said the source. “A night of dinner and dancing should not include the risk of contracting foodborne illness.”

A night earlier, the hip-hop mogul held an A-list party to reopen the hotspot, which was closed for 10 months for a $10 million makeover. Famous guests included Russell Simmons, Spike Lee, Lance Bass and Warren Buffett.

In about three hours, as I blissfully sleep, U.S. ag-types will take to the PR circuit to advance a new program for poultry inspection.

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. would increase oversight of poultry processors’ sanitary practices and contamination controls instead of visually checking each chicken and turkey for scabs and sores under a plan that would save the industry $250 million a year.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said the proposal, to be presented today, may prevent 5,200 foodborne illnesses a year by modernizing and making the system more efficient by taking the emphasis off visual imperfections that can harm poultry sales rather than improve safety.

“It’s obviously about safer food and fewer foodborne illnesses,” Vilsack said in an interview. “It’s also about reducing the cost of production in an effective way without redundancy or compromising safety.”

The U.S. would save as much as $40 million a year within two or three years, in part through the elimination of inspection jobs, Vilsack said. Last week, the secretary announced a reorganization of his agency that would lower spending by about $150 million a year, or 1 percent of the department’s budget. The public will have 90 days to comment on the proposal.

The USDA would continue to inspect poultry carcasses at the end of the production line before they are chilled and will be on site at all times, Vilsack said. Slaughter operators have the option of requesting the U.S. continue visual inspections for blemishes, according to the proposed regulation.

Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN), in an e-mail. Tyson, based in Springdale, Arkansas and the largest U.S. chicken producer by volume, participated in the pilot program testing the new inspection rules.

“This modified system reduces redundancies between company and USDA inspection efforts and gives USDA’s staff more flexibility to focus on other things that verify the effectiveness of our food safety activities,” said Mickelson, adding that Tyson has not yet seen the proposed regulation.

The pilot program with 25 poultry processors conducted over more than a decade found no increased risk of injuries to workers from the faster production line and showed the effort to be successful, said Elisabeth Hagen, undersecretary for food safety at the USDA, in an interview.

Inspectors began visually inspecting poultry for physical defects in 1906, before it was possible to detect microbial contamination that can’t be seen and poses a hazard, he said.

“Offices don’t inspect, even then inspections don’t make food safe. It is up to the producers, the processors and the retailers. Inspections only hold people accountable. It is up to the industry to make food safe, not the inspection services -they are ultimately responsible for the products they produce.”

Or something like that as I, described as US-based food safety professor and blogger Doug Powell, chatted to the British reporter in France in the late Australian hours about a U.S. food safety policy decision.

Mark Astley of Food Quality News writes that US food safety and inspection efforts will not be hit, despite plans to close a third of Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) district offices, according to the US government.

The closures are part of the USDA’s Blueprint for Stronger Service plan, which will see the closure of almost 260 offices, facilities and labs across the US.

FoodQualityNews.com understands that the changes will impact inspection reporting structure but will not affect the inspection duties performed in the districts.

In the classic he said/he said situation the owner of a popular New York diner, George's, says that an restaurant inspector started making up infractions after the owner began documenting what he believed was an unfair inspection. According to the New York Post, owner Bill Koulmentas challenged some of the violations he was being cited for (including poor sanitation and temperature abuse of time/temperature control foods) and pulled out his iPhone when he felt the inspector was going to far. End result was 65 demerit points and a closure.

“They can do anything they want,” [Koulmentas] said. “Something’s out of control here. It’s lies, lies, lies.”
Koulmentas said the ordeal that prompted him to break out his cellphone camera began at about 9:30 a.m. yesterday, when Inspector Kenneth Reid began writing one trumped-up violation after another.
When the inspector crawled under a dishwasher and reported finding 13 roaches in the wall, Koulmentas said he did the same and couldn’t spot anything.

“I’ll give you $1,000 if you show me a roach,” Koulmentas protested.
Having experienced a similarly overzealous inspection a month earlier, Koulmentas said he decided to document what was happening.

Out came the iPhone.

Health Department spokesman John Kelly defended the inspection as legitimate, noting that George’s — which has been in business since 1950 — had accumulated 56 points under another inspector last month.
“The inspector recommended closing the place [back then],” reported Kelly. “The supervisor said let’s give him an opportunity to fix the problem. Basically, he caught a break.”

In August — barely five months ago — the eatery was awarded the top grade of “A.”