Posted: April 15th, 2010 - 8:03am by Doug Powell

In further evidence of how seemingly good people confuse food safety with food pornography, Francine Thorpe, the owner of a Prince Edward Island restaurant at the center of a norovirus outbreak that has now sickened up to 48 people decided to make a public statement:

“In our history we are proud to say that we have never been cited for any food-related infractions by provincial health officials. … We take pride in our food service, our people and more importantly we value our loyal, cherished customers. We maintain a modern, sanitary kitchen, employing some of the best experienced food preparation people in the business. We try to buy local products and serve only the very best of fresh ingredients. We very much regret what has transpired and are determined to find out exactly what happened.”

Local and fresh do not mean safe. Never been cited for food infractions doesn’t mean you haven’t made people barf, or that your employees haven’t shown up for work while sick. Tell the good citizens of PEI about your employee training and hygiene procedures rather than how local and fresh your ingredients are. It has to do with a lot of people barfing.