Posted: February 28th, 2012 - 5:56am
by Doug Powell
An NBC 5 investigation finds that more than 200 Dallas restaurants have not been inspected in at least two years.
The city of Dallas has been scrambling to inspect hundreds of restaurants because of an NBC 5 investigation.
NBC 5 discovered that the city's inspection system has broken down so badly that some restaurants haven't been checked in years -- not even once.
Wherever you eat, you never know what's happening in the kitchen. That's why cities have inspectors -- to check for things that could make you sick.
Or at least that's what we thought they were doing, until NBC 5 started asking questions and digging through city records.
Our investigation turned up a list of 241 restaurants the city of Dallas hasn't checked since at least 2009.
NBC 5 followed health inspectors to one of those restaurants, a diner that hadn't been checked in so long that the owner wondered if the city was ever coming back.
The people in charge of city inspections didn't know so many were so overdue until NBC 5 pointed it out.
Peter Snyder, an expert in food safety with more than 40 years of experience in the restaurant industry, said what happens in Dallas is typical of many big cities he sees around the country (like Houston, which called on Pete’s expertise a few months ago). Cities have cut back on inspectors and are not able to keep up with the workload, and restaurant customers can end up paying the price.
"You can have massive foodborne outbreaks -- which we're having these days where somebody forgets to wash their hands, and you get hepatitis A in the salsa, and 60 people get sick," Snyder said.
Two years ago, Dallas had 23 restaurant inspectors.
But the city cut five positions, and then five more inspectors left in the last year and a half. They've never been replaced.
Today Dallas has 13 people to inspect more than 6,000 restaurants.
Tracey Evers, president of the Greater Dallas Restaurant Association said, "There's nothing that replaces that one-on-one interaction with the health inspector and the restaurant.”
In Fort Worth, NBC 5's investigation also found restaurants that haven't been checked in a long time.
NBC 5's questions sent the city scrambling to inspect a list of about 50 restaurants it hadn't visited in at least two years.
And when the inspectors finally went into some of those kitchens, records show they found critical health violations such as no paper towels in the restroom, broken refrigerator thermometers and workers who didn't have proper training to handle food.
"Certainly we'd like to have more frequent contact and be able to go to these establishments on a more regular basis," said Scott Hanlan, of Fort Worth's Code Compliance Division.
It now has 13 people inspecting 2,100 restaurants. But the same inspectors are also responsible for checking things such as swimming pools, food trucks and large special events that serve food.
Instead, he favors a system where employees are trained by food service managers in controlling safety hazards, then demonstrate their mastery of the procedures to an inspector.
"This is the only effective full-control program," said Snyder, founder of the Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management in St. Paul, Minn. "The reason inspectors don't do this and (instead) simply inspect for things is because it takes too long."
What evidence is there that Pete’s program does any good?
What evidence is there that all those food safety messages repeated ad nauseam, especially during the holidays, do any good? (None)
What evidence is there food safety training programs do any good? (it’s mixed, but fairly lousy; more on that in a month).
In Sept.. 2007, my friend Frank was running food safety things at Disney in Orlando, and asked me to visit and speak with his staff.
“Doug, I want you to talk about food safety messages that have been proven to work, that are supported by peer-reviewed evidence and lead to demonstrated behavior change,” or something like that.
I said it would be a brief talk.
There was nothing – nothing – that could be rigorously demonstrated to have changed food safety behavior in any group, positive or negative. Everything was about as effective as those, ‘Employees must wash hands’ signs.
“They’re not following their own rules, and if they’re not following their own rules, they’re not protecting public health,” said food scientist Dr. Pete Snyder.
Just how often was the city not following its own rules? The I-Team found 4,009 restaurants, 65 percent of all Houston eateries, overdue for a health inspection.
And in hundreds of cases, the city was tardy by more than a year.
“Shape up and get their damn inspections fixed,” said Dr. Snyder, who was studying food safety and inspecting kitchens before we put a man on the moon.
As the founder and president of Minnesota-based Hospitality Institute of Technology and Management, he has educated thousands of executives, owners, chefs and employees on procedures for producing safe food.
He said delinquent inspections can undermine the entire regulatory process.
“Pretty soon the operator begins to believe that the health department is not real, they’re not going to punish him, and that’s bad,” Snyder said.
“Any restaurant in Houston that’s open for business is a safe place to eat,” said Patrick Key, Bureau Chief of Consumer Health Services.
At Ninfa’s in the 8500 block of the Gulf Freeway, Houston city inspectors closed the restaurant down in September 2010 after finding numerous violations. Those included live roaches, no soap in the kitchen sink, and food not safe for human consumption. The next day management corrected most of the violations, but was still written up for the treatment of roach activity.
It was due for another inspection in six months. But instead, the city waited more than a year.
”You don’t let go of that restaurant until the restaurant has solved the problem,” Dr. Snyder said. But repeat problems don’t always sound the city’s alarms either.
Consider the Triple J’s Smokehouse in the 6700 block of Homestead Road. It had 154 violations over the past three years. Its last inspection, November 2010, turned up equipment not washed, rinsed and sanitized, as well as potentially hazardous foods at unsafe temperatures. For that, the city should have checked up this past January, but has yet to do so.
There’s also KC’s Seafood and Grill in the 400 block of Maxey Road. City records showed it was a year and a half overdue for a health inspection, so we paid a visit with a food safety expert.
“Everything’s been corrected,” said the manager who identified herself as Debbie.
She told us everything was OK after a city inspector had finally shown up a few weeks before we did. But Dr. Snyder still found problems, from cooked food sitting out at room temperature, to problems with the kitchen sink.
“There’s no soap, there’s no paper towels, you couldn’t possibly use the hand sink to wash your hands in,” Dr. Snyder said, adding that hand washing is critical.
“That’s how half of the foodborne illness occurs,” Dr. Snyder said.
So the I-Team had some questions for that city bureau chief who said you should feel confident every Houston restaurant is a safe place to eat.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had enough staff,” said Patrick Key.
Key said the city just can’t keep up with its two requirements—annual inspections on all food permit establishments, as well as risk-based inspections on eateries with poor previous inspection scores.
But when the I-Team began digging, Key suddenly ordered 500 inspections at past due eateries. He said those were all done over the course of a week. ”90 percent of them got a score of one or two which are good scores,” Key said.
But for Dr. Snyder, good may not be good enough. Consider the Pho Saigon restaurant in the 2500 Block of Gessner, one of the 500 eateries the city had scrambled to inspect.
“They have bad cooling practices, they have bad hot holding practices, these are things that really make people sick,” said Dr. Snyder.
Dr. Snyder said the city should be saying this:
“We can’t have out-of-date facilities who are supposed to be inspected. We will have none of those anymore.”
As for Ninfa’s, the Gulf Freeway restaurant received a handful of non-critical violations on its most recent inspection last month. Additionally, Dr. Snyder gave the kitchen good marks during his tour of the restaurant.
The best way is to make a crushed/slush ice mixture of ice in a Wearing blender and put the tip of the thermometer in the middle of the ice and see what the thermometer reads. If it reads between 30 to 34 F, it is calibrated and ready for use. If it reads outside these limits, throw it away and buy a new one.
Note, to get 32F, it has to be crushed ice. If it is just packed ice cubes, it will probably not be any colder than 34F. Don't use the boiling point of water. It is never 212 because of altitude and barometric pressure.
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inspectors and are not able to keep up with the workload, and restaurant customers can end up paying the price.
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inspection grades keeps everyone awake
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A reader asked, “Any recommendations on how to calibrate a digital tip thermometer for home use?”.jpg)
So I turned to thermometer guru Pete Snyder of the .jpg)
