Mandatory

  • Scores on Doors should be mandatory in Queensland: picture proof

    Posted: November 12th, 2011 - 1:53pm by Doug Powell

    Sunday morning in Brisbane, Australia, where the birds start their symphony about 4 a.m., fully light by 4:30 a.m., getting ready to listen to some Kansas State football, and photographs in the Sunday Mail of food service cold rooms, many of them “too gross to publish.”

    The Sunshine Coast-based company Jaymak has provided pictures of the unappetizing conditions found inside the cold rooms of some of the state's restaurants and eateries, in support of calls for a mandatory "scores on doors" scheme.

    Some cities like Brisbane have voluntary schemes, which is sorta dumb.

    One of the worst cases involved a decomposing bird stuck in a cool room compartment at a fast food chain.

    Photographs from other cool rooms reveal the build-up of mold and slime.

    Jaymak owner Arie de Jong said the "ugliest" conditions were found within hard-to-reach air compartments, but the conditions could quickly spread mold and bacteria to food storage areas.

    For a review of the purpose of restaurant inspection disclosure schemes and our experiment in New Zealand, see:

    http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/blog/140521/09/11/30/k-state-graduate-student-helping-new-zealand-development-national-restaurant-in

    http://barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/blog/151230/11/11/03/letter-grade-preferred-designing-national-restaurant-inspection-disclosure-syst

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    Disclosure, food safety, Mandatory, restaurant inspection, scores doors
  • Coaching hockey requires mandatory training, so should food preparation

    Posted: August 14th, 2011 - 9:18pm by Doug Powell

    Doug Powell cooking.kstate.jpg

    Ottawa Public Health is debating whether to force all food handlers in the city to take a mandatory food safety course.

    Parenting and preparing food are about the only two activities that do not require some kind of certification in Western countries. For example, to coach little girls playing ice hockey in Canada requires 16 hours of training. To coach kids on a travel team requires an additional 24 hours of training.

    Anyone who serves, prepares or handles food, in a restaurant, nursing home, day care center, supermarket or local market needs some basic food safety training.

    Sherry Beadle, Ottawa health department's program manager of food safety, said, "The difference with this certification program is it allows a greater in-depth look at food handling practices. Training is always a good thing."

    Not if the training is mind-numbingly dull, trying to transform line cooks or servers into microbiology or HACCP experts. That’s why training needs goals and continual evaluation.

    There could be mandatory food handler training, for say, three hours, that could happen in school, on the job, whatever. But training is only a beginning. Just because someone is told to wash the poop off their hands before they prepare salad for 100 people doesn't mean it is going to happen; weekly outbreaks of hepatitis A confirm this. There are a number of additional carrots and sticks that can be used to create a culture that values microbiologically safe food and a work environment that rewards hygienic behavior. But mandating basic training is a start.

    Eight of Ontario’s 36 health units currently require mandatory certification.

    The course should be mandatory, and then should be evaluated and improved so that food service employees actually use what they allegedly learn, with the ultimate goal of reducing the number of foodborne illnesses.

    And the best establishments won’t wait for government. Ottawa restaurant owner Daoud Ahmadi, who has been in the food industry for 13 years, told CBC News it should be a mandatory course for anyone who handles food and that he expects all his new employees to take the course even though it is currently voluntary.

    "It is really important for people that are working on the food," Ahmadi said.
     

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    food safety, Food Service, Mandatory, restaurant inspection, Training
  • Toronto takes on feds, province, issues own food safety agenda

    Posted: April 17th, 2009 - 6:16am by Doug Powell

    I hear from local public health officials all the time, and the ones in Canada repeatedly say the single food inspection agency -- known creatively as, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency – sucks.

    The provincial regulators also suck.

    So after years of taking it, the City of Toronto is once again trailblazing when it comes to serving the public – those who end up barfing from bad food – and has come up with its own idea of a food safety system that serves people.

    Robert Cribb of the Toronto Star reports this morning that in a series of three reports to be presented to Toronto city council on Monday (available at http://www.toronto.ca/health/moh/foodsecurity.htm), foodborne illness in Toronto is rampant and that in order to have fewer people barfing:

    • Ontario should consider compensating food handlers who  are too sick to come to work due to "gastrointestinal illness;"
     
    •  Ontario and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency should provide "full and timely disclosure of the food safety performance of all food premises
    they inspect;” and,
     
    • mandatory food handler training and certification, as recommended in the Justice Haines report of 2004 (that was my contribution).

    A related story maintains that cases of foodborne illness began to fall almost immediately after Toronto began making restaurant inspection results public in 2001.

    John Filion, chair of the city's board of health, said it is the clearest evidence yet of the public health benefits of transparency.

    Good for Toronto, especially when the feds and the province leave the locals out to dry on outbreaks of foodborne illness. In the Aug. 2008 outbreak of listeria linked to Maple Leaf deli meats, Toronto health types said they had plenty of evidence something was amiss in July, but CFIA and others refused to go public until Aug. 17, 2008. So with a federal listeria inquiry set to begin Monday, and Maple Leaf all focused on federal regulations, how are Maple Leaf executives going to handle pesky local health units like Toronto – the ones who actually do the work, uncover outbreaks and create their own headlines.

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    Dinesafe, Mandatory, Toronto, Training, Transparency