The New York City Council will announce Wednesday that nearly 1,000 restaurant operators have responded, after only two weeks, to a Web survey seeking their views about the city health department’s new letter-grading system for food safety.

As of Tuesday, 965 responses had been submitted — a sign “that we’ve hit a nerve,” said Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker. “We’re getting surveys from every borough, and from very diverse neighborhoods.”

Opinions expressed in the responses will be revealed in Council hearings scheduled for late February or early March. Responding to what the speaker said was “a wave of complaints” about letter grading, the Council posted a questionnaire on its Web site (www.council.nyc.gov) asking the city’s 24,000 restaurateurs to share information about their experiences with inspectors and administrative tribunals, and the cost of fines and inspection consultants.

Susan Craig, a department spokeswoman, said a survey last summer showed that 90 percent of New Yorkers approved of letter grading, and questioned the methodology and the validity of the Council questionnaire, which asks for but does not require the names of respondents. “The survey has no method of confirming that a participant is actually a restaurant, nor does it ensure that an entrant fills out only one submission,” Ms. Craig said. “The results — good or bad — will have negligible value.”

But Zoe Tobin, a Council spokeswoman, responded that “there is a vetting system in place” that checks for duplication and fraud. “We felt that anonymity was important to encourage candid responses,” she said.

A survey response rate of 4.2 per cent sorta sucks and isn’t representative of much.

Roberto Rocha blogs in the Montreal Gazette that the open data movement and the great apps that citizens create around it depends on government inaction. In essence, citizens are providing products and services that authorities, depending on your political view, probably should.

An example of this is RestoNet.ca, a child of Montreal’s open data knights.

Compare its straightforward, easy-to-use map with its data source, the City of Montreal’s website that lists restaurant hygiene infractions.

Granted, the city may not have the resources or the know-how to make all its services Web 2.0-compliant. And it’s a positive affirmation of community spirit that citizens are taking action, voluntarily, to make tools that help other citizens. If anything, it’s a sign of a healthy society.

Toronto’s DineSafe website makes public all restaurant inspection reports, and it’s updated daily. It also gives each establishment a color code: green for pass, yellow for conditional pass, and red for closed. This offers an easy-to-understand visual cue. Since it was implemented in 2001, the compliance rate among restauranteurs has jumped from less than 50% to 92%, according to program head Sylvano Thompson. That means fewer follow-up inspections and better use of resources.

Vancouver Coastal Health inspects restaurants and publishes the three most recent reports, though they don’t grade restaurants in any way. However, posting repeat inspection reports does offer an incentive for compliance.

Ottawa’s EatSafe database is much like Vancouver’s: it lists the results of past inspections, whether pass or fail, although it’s not as detailed.

Montreal only posts establishments that have been fined, and the latest reports are form October 2011, even though city spokespeople say it’s supposed to be refreshed monthly.

It’s the ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ) that makes the rules regarding restaurant inspections. The city doesn’t have the power to give hygiene grades or force restaurants to display inspections reports.

And the province has been resistant to change since it took over inspection duties in 2002. A March 15, 2004 article in The Gazette comparing Toronto to Montreal said:

Unless there’s significant public pressure, it’s unlikely the system will make its way to Quebec in the near future, said Daniel Tremblay, a food-inspection spokesperson for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

“There have been groups that have pushed for that in the past,” at parliamentary hearings into food inspection, Tremblay said, but at the moment, no change is expected.

Blame it on Quebec’s Secret Society.

Starting July 1, restaurants in Albany County, New York, will be required to post a prominent sign (right) near the front entrance to announce a simple, clear verdict of county health inspections: excellent, good, fair or unsatisfactory.

Only the first three will remain on display; restaurants that receive an “unsatisfactory” rating will be required to close immediately to remedy health violations and will be reinspected within days.

Although inspection criteria, guided by state law, will not change, Albany County Department of Health restaurant inspectors will use a new rating matrix to decide which rating to award. The matrix takes into account the number of “blue” (minor) and “red” (serious) violations a restaurant receives.

According to the language of the final resolution, adopted by the county board of health last month, restaurants receiving a “fair” rating will be reinspected within two to three weeks, while those that receive a “good” may request a reinspection, to be carried out “as staffing and resources permit.” Inspections are done at county expense, and there is no provision in the new law for restaurants to be able to pay for a reinspection to be done more quickly.

Never underestimate the Brits’ ways with words. In a discussion document ostensibly asking consumers what they think, the Food Standards Agency has pronounced that under its poorly named Earned Recognition scheme (bring back Scores on Doors), “food businesses that are able to demonstrate a history of good compliance with the legislation, or that are members of a private assurance scheme, would receive a lighter touch in terms of the number and type of official inspections.”

Has FSA heard about foodborne illness outbreaks associated with third-party audits or other such schemes?

The proposed changes will help to ensure consumer safety by concentrating resources where improvement is most needed, for example on businesses that are less compliant or higher risk.

Is that what lighter touch means? Sounds more like a fluffer.

The full report can be found at http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/earnedrecog.pdf.