Fancy food does not mean safe food -- really
Proving once again that fancy food does not mean safe food, Your Local Guardian reports that of the 539 establishments rated in Merton, U.K. this year under the Scores on the Doors rating scheme, supported by the Food Standards Agency, 94 were given a one-star or "poor" rating and 31 were given a no star or "very poor" rating, making a total of 125.The rating ranges from no stars for the worst levels of compliance, through to five stars for the very best standards of food safety management. A two star rating is defined as largely compliant with national requirements.
Jeff Ward, general manager of Cannizaro House Hotel, which received no stars, said"We are the only four-star hotel in the area and have two rosettes from the AA. I was shocked by the rating. We have spent £20,000 on the kitchen since then and will be inviting the inspectors back to reassess us now."
Steve Barr, Secretary of London Scottish Golf Club, which received no stars, said, "We think the rating was unfair because we were in the process of changing our steward and caterers. We are very confident we will get a much better rating next time."
Cockroach sandwich? Calls to name and shame dirty school canteens
The Australians are really getting into restaurant inspection disclosure -- via the name and shame route.Sydneysiders are now saying school canteens should be held to the same standards.
Australia.com reports that,
Gastro outbreaks, cockroaches in sandwiches and mice droppings in pie ovens are among a number of complaints that have seen 38 Sydney schools targeted by the food safety authority since 2004.
Shadow Education Minister Andrew Stoner said,
“We don’t allow other businesses – takeaways and restaurants – to get away with this. We can’t allow school canteens to do it. … name and shame the schools where canteens are not up to scratch.”
Go for it.
Alberta sets provincewide standards for restaurants and inspection disclosure
One year after a three-part investigation by the Edmonton Journal, Karen Kleiss reports this morning that the number of compulsory restaurant closures is up, health regions across the province have adopted minimum standards, and all Albertans can expect to have online access to inspection results by July 1.Capital Health Authority spokesman Steve Buick, referring to lessons learned after last year's complaints by the public and provincial auditor general, said,
"We think generally the system has served people well, but it needed upgrading in a few key respects, and certainly the disclosure issue is one of them. We get that the public wants to see more information. ... It needs to be more transparent, and it will be."
Health Minister Dave Hancock has ordered all Alberta health regions to adopt uniform risk assessment and management standards, and he wants all Alberta health regions to come up with a plan to make restaurant inspection reports available online.
Robert Bradbury, director of public health for the Calgary Health Region, said,
"We will move as close to complete disclosure as we possibly can. It's all about choice. The more information the dining public has, the better prepared they are to make that choice."
(1).png)
Another convert. Now, what is the most effective and meaningful way to communicate the results of restaurant inspections?Last year, The Journal put a searchable database of restaurant inspections on the edmontonjournal.com website. It received more than 500,000 hits.
Restaurant inspection discloure: consumers love it
.jpg)
Mark Arsenault of the Rhode Island Providence-Journal is the latest to validate what I've long suspected: that the dining public apparently has a huge appetite for information about food safety.Arsenault says that tens of thousands of people have viewed health inspection reports for Rhode Island restaurants, delis, convenience stores and other places food is served since the reports first became available online last Tuesday.
Ernest M. Julian, chief of the Office of Food Protection at the Rhode Island Department of Health, said,
“We had one person call us who said they searched for 100 places online. People are checking all the places they eat. … It’s obvious the public wants this information, based on the number of views."
.png)
The Health Department has posted a database of some 4,000 food service inspection reports, covering about half the food establishments in the state, dating back to January. The reports list health violations with short explanations. The inspection reports are available at www.health.ri.gov/environment/food/inspections.php.After being publicized by local media, the site attracted so much Web traffic on Thursday that an Internet traffic jam developed that temporarily slowed the site.
Restaurant inspection disclosure on its own does little, but does contribute to developing a culture that values microbiologically safe food.
Scores on doors
That's the snappy name the U.K. is using for restaurant inspection disclosure across the entire country.For instance, one story reports that food hygiene standards at more than 60 catering outlets across Bradford district, UK, have been graded very poor and their staff had "little or no appreciation of food safety."
The results released and posted on the website www.scoresonthedoors.org, give each outlet a grading of between none and five stars.
The story notes that the prestigious Ilkley Golf Club in Nesfield Road, where top golfer Colin Montgomerie learned to play and names former European Ryder Cup captain Mark James as an honorary member, was among those retaurants given no stars -- the lowest ranking possible.
The council's grading system defines no stars as a performance level very poor' and that club staff show "a general failure to comply with legal requirements" and "little or no appreciation of food safety."
Inspectors also found that there was "little" confidence in management.
Ratings for all the catering outlets the inspectors visited are available at www.scoresonthedoors.org.uk.
We're all for restaurant inspection disclosure, not because it necessarily enhances the microbial safety of food, but it does contribute to a food safety culture.
Curb Your Enthusiasm again features L.A.'s restaurant inspection grades
I never liked the television series, Seinfeld.During it's original run from 1989 -- 1998, I rarely watched, and when I did, found the characters self-indulgent and whiny. Which they were. It just wasn't that funny.
Curb Your Enthusiasm by Seinfeld co-creator Larry David is much better.
For the second week now of the new season, the Los Angeles restaurant inspection signs -- in both cases A -- are prominently displayed.
Tonight, as Larry is waiting to get ice cream behind a sample abuser -- someone who asks to sample every flavor available -- a big L.A. restaurant inspection A is displayed in the window (thanks, Reece, for finding this pic).
Larry won't however take the $50 he is owed in a golf bet from the newly orphaned Marty Funkhouser after the death of his mother, preceded by the death of his father last year, because of its dodgy microbiological quality after being removed from the insole of Marty's jogging shoe.
Larry also says that the customer is usually "a moron and an a**hole."
But they pay. And they like their restaurant inspection disclosure letters (L.A.), colors (Toronto), or smiley faces (Denmark).
Orlando, this is directed at you.
Post the scores
.jpg)
The Orlando Sentinel argues in a forceful editorial that Florida restaurants should be posting some kind of restaurant inspection information rather than requiring would-be customers to visit a web site.Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation Secretary Holly Benson says, "No one ever goes to our Web site."
The editorial says that state inspections of Central Florida restaurants found that almost one in three eateries in the past 14 months got cited for rodent- or roach-related violations.
Two in five employed poor hygienic practices, including workers not washing their hands.
And three of five restaurants scored at least 10 "critical violations" that can lead to a variety of foodborne illnesses.
The editorial further says that Ms. Benson should push the Legislature not just to require easily understandable inspections in restaurants, but to give you enough staff for three inspections per year per restaurant. Now, the department struggles to conduct just two inspections.
Push it to give you authority to impose more meaningful fines, and to give you more resources so your department can better educate operators in sanitary food preparation.
Push it to allow you to get more restaurants to do daily what most of them already, generally, are doing: serving the public well.
Post the scores. Such public displays of information help bolster overall awareness of food safety amongst staff and the public -- people routinely talk about this stuff. The interested public can handle more, not less, information about food safety.
And instead of waiting for politicians to take the lead, the best restaurants, those with nothing to hide and everything to be proud of, will go ahead and make their inspection scores available -- today.
Quality and safety are two different things
Four students in a graduate seminar in investigative reporting at Northeastern University put together and published an impressive feature on restaurant inspection disclosure - or lack thereof -- in the Boston Globe this morning.The authors/students had fun focusing especially on so-called high-end restaurants and their many food safety failings.
"For almost a month late this spring, devotees of Tealuxe, the popular Newbury Street tea house and cafe, was closed -- for mechanical repairs, its manager, Ryan Moore, was cited as insisting in an interview Friday....
"But, according to an internal report prepared by the Boston Public Health Commission, the restaurant was shuttered because at least 21 people, including 10 employees, were exposed to the salmonella bacteria the first week of May, and of those, 11 patrons and three employees became ill."
The feature story lists dozens of restaurant infractions at various fancy eateries,
"At too many restaurants, inspectors regularly find violations that suggest that managers and owners do not take in-house food safety training seriously, especially for immigrant employees with limited English language skills. As a result, many workers do not wash their hands between tasks or wear hair restraints, do not change gloves when appropriate or even wear gloves when handling bread and other ready-to-eat items.
"Such findings may surprise most consumers, because the city's Division of Health Inspections, which is part of the Inspectional Services Department, keeps its reports buried in file drawers. An ISD website -- http://www. cityofboston.gov/isd/health/mfc/court.asp -- offers only limited and outdated information. And what the site does have is difficult to understand for anyone who is not a food safety specialist.
"When the Globe asked for the inspection reports, ISD said it would take 78 hours of staff time, plus copying costs, to produce them -- at a cost of $2,039. When the newspaper challenged the estimate, city officials recalculated the time involved, and reduced the cost to about $600.
"Also kept under wraps, available only through a formal public records request, are the identities of close to 400 food service establishments -- the Federalist included -- that have been temporarily shut down since 2002 for food safety violations.
In an interview, Thomas J. Goodfellow, the director of ISD's Division of Health Inspections, could not explain why Boston, unlike other cities, had not publicized the closings, or even posted them online. State law, Goodfellow said, does not require it."
There's just too many stinky hands.
Publicly available grading systems rapidly communicate to diners the potential risk in dining at a particular establishment and restaurants given a lower grade may be more likely to comply with health regulations in the future to prevent lost business.
More importantly, such public displays of information help bolster overall awareness of food safety amongst staff and the public -- people routinely talk about this stuff. The interested public can handle more, not less, information about food safety.
And instead of waiting for politicians to take the lead, the best restaurants, those with nothing to hide and everything to be proud of, will go ahead and make their inspection scores available -- today.
Eat, drink and golf
Newport News, Virginia, host of the annual Jeff Schieck invitational golf and gabfest, is getting into restaurant inspection disclosure, big time.
It's the latest attempt by cities and states to provide meaningful information about dining establishments, and even more notable, newspapers themselves are hiring folks to present the information in a user-friendly manner.
Those of us who gather in Newport News every spring appreciate the additional information, and look forward to the rankings at Schieck's favorite dining spot, Golden Corral.
This is a terrible picture ...
.jpg)
... but it's what Toronto's restaurant inspection disclosure system looks like -- the infamous red, yellow, green.Columbus, Ohio, has apparently decided to adopt a similar system. Barnet D. Wolf of The Columbus Dispatch reports that,
"The inspection process has received more attention since the board instituted a color-coded food-safety sign system for restaurants, markets and other retail food businesses. The signs tell consumers whether the location meets state health-code requirements.
The green sign means all standards have been met. Red means the facility has been shut down or put on probation for critical code violations.
A number of restaurant owners viewed the signs' introduction with dismay, thinking the process would be overly costly and time consuming.
After initially opposing the signs, the Central Ohio Restaurant Association has changed its mind. Gail Baker, the group's director, said the system is "fair to restaurants and will give the public a tool" to assess dining spots' safety.
Fighting public disclosure is a bad idea. Figuring out the best way to provide information is a good idea.
Proactive postings
.jpg)
While many cities grapple with the desirability of restaurant inspection disclosure, a new City of Milwaukee Web site is offering the first-of-its-kind digital system that enables visitors to review health inspection records of city restaurants, food stores and other outlets that sell food.Alderman Michael Murphy was quoted as saying "The great thing about this new Web site is that it provides timely information on the current City of Milwaukee Health Department (MHD) codes compliance of any restaurant, tavern, or food store in the city. So, if you have any questions about the cleanliness or condition of a particular city business selling food, you just go online and review the reports for yourself."
Kudos to Milwaukee for embracing disclosure.
