Shoot, shovel and shut up - the wrong approach for animal and zoonotic diseases
Daughter Sorenne woke up around 6:15 a.m. after a big Halloween night (thanks for the costume, Katie). Then the clocks on the computer changed and I realized it was 5:15 a.m.
Damn you daylight savings.
So while Sorenne plays on the floor and fills her diaper, I’m looking at a poignant release from the France-based World Organization for Animal Health, inexplicably referred to as OIE (it’s a French thing) reiterating the importance of animal health rules to control human disease.
When the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad cow disease was discovered in Canada in May, 2003, Alberta premier Ralph Klein famously declared that any
"self-respecting rancher would have shot, shovelled and shut up."
In 1184, city leaders in Toulouse, France, introduced some of the first documented measures to oversee the sale of meat: profit for butchers was limited to eight per cent; the partnership between two butchers was forbidden; and, selling the meat of sick animals was forbidden unless the buyer was warned.
By 1394, the Toulouse charter on butchering contained 60 articles, 19 of which were devoted to health and safety.
As outlined by Madeleine Ferrières, a professor of social history at the University of Avignon, in her 2002 book, Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears, the goal of regulations at butcher shops -- the forerunners of today's slaughterhouse -- was to safeguard consumers and increase tax revenues. Animals from the surrounding countryside were consolidated at a single spot -- the evolving slaughterhouse, originally inside city walls -- so taxes could be more easily gathered, and so animals could be physically examined for signs of disease.
It's no different today: slaughterhouses are common collection points to examine animals for signs of disease and to collect various levies. And like medieval times, one of the most basic rules is animals that cannot walk are forbidden from entering (the slaughterhouse or city).
Bernard Vallat, Director General of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), reminded the world this morning that veterinary legislation is the foundation of any efficient animal health policy.
Veterinary legislation is a critical infrastructure element for all countries. In many OIE Member countries, the veterinary legislation has not been updated for many years and is obsolete or inadequate in structure and content for the challenges facing veterinary services in today's world.
Dr Vallat says that it is important that the veterinary services have the authority to enter livestock premises and other establishments and take the actions needed for early detection, reporting and rapid and effective management of any animal diseases as soon as they are detected. Such actions include the capacity to seize animals and products, to impose standstills, quarantine, testing and other procedures; to control animals and products at frontiers; and to require the destruction and safe disposal of animals and all articles considered to present a risk of disease transmission and to public health. These activities represent the core activities of veterinary services in the field of animal health control and veterinary public health and the legislation must provide the necessary authority as a minimum.
Another A for Curb Your Enthusiasm
Rather than wait a week, Amy and I watched Sunday’s Curb Your Enthusiasm last night. And there it was – another Los Angeles restaurant inspection disclosure A on the front of a pizza shop. I’m starting to think the L.A. County health department is paying for A placements in the scripts.
An A for the ice cream shop on Curb Your Enthusiasm
Finally getting around to watching last week’s Curb Your Enthusiasm before delving into this week’s, and once again, the Los Angeles restaurant inspection disclosure program is the money shot of the show.
In addition to the A, the 31 Ice Cream has some sort of food safety seal I haven’t seen before.
Clear labeling needed; Crunch Berries not a fruit
It's important for food companies to disclose relevant information to the public so that consumers can make informed decisions about what they eat.
For example, Cap'n Crunch should make it abundantly clear that the berries in its cereal are not real fruit so that Californian Janine Sugawara can intelligently balance her diet. 
News 10 in Sacramento reports that Sugawara filed a class-action lawsuit against the makers of Cap'n Crunch cereal last June because one product's label misled her. She bought Cap'n Crunch cereal for four years because she thought the Crunch Berries were real fruit.
Federal Judge Morrison England, Jr. dismissed the suit, saying, "a reasonable consumer would have understood the product packaging to expressly warrant only that the product contained sweetened corn and oat cereal, which it did."
"As far as this court has been been made aware, there is no such fruit (Crunch Berries) growing in the wild or occurring naturally in any part of the world," England wrote.
England also noted that Sugawara's lawyer, Harold Hewell, filed a simliar suit against Fruit Loops that was also thrown out of court.
Letter grades for Abu Dhabi restaurants?
If the UAE takes letter grades for restaurant inspection disclosure, will they also take American pop culture crap like The Hills (right).
The National reports that more than half of all restaurants monitored by Sharjah Municipality have failed basic food hygiene inspections on such grounds as out-of-date food and mouldy kitchens.
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Over the past 12 months, inspectors checked 1,588 restaurants and cafeterias, of which only 223 met the minimum requirements, according to Jassim Mohammed al Ali, head of the municipality’s internal inspection department.
Of the remaining establishments, 891 were issued with warnings and 474 were closed temporarily until they improved.
Restaurants and grocery shops in the capital will face similar inspections over the coming weeks.
The news comes a week after a four-year-old girl died from food poisoning in Sharjah. Marwa Faisal died in Al Qassimi Hospital early last Sunday, just 55 minutes after she, her parents and her brother had been admitted with symptoms that included violent vomiting. …
The Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority has warned grocery shop operators and restaurant managers in the emirate a concerted food inspection campaign is on the way in the lead-up to the summer.
Last month in Al Ain, spot checks by ADFCA inspectors and city police found 143 lorries hauling produce to markets and restaurants without proper permits. …
The ADFCA is also considering implementing a restaurants grading system similar to that implemented in 2006 for fish markets and butcher shops.
Under the proposed programme, all the emirate’s food outlets would be required clearly to display a certificate disclosing health inspection results –“A” for exceptional health and safety practices, “B” for very good, or a passing “C” grade.
Dirty dining in Manhattan (Kansas)
Katie Filion and Brandon Speight, students in my food safety reporting class, write,
There is nothing appetizing about dead rodents, crusty slicers or sewage in a restaurant kitchen, but these are problems the Riley County Department of Health and Environment, in Manhattan, Kansas, has encountered during recent restaurant inspections. So how does a consumer, unable to witness what goes on behind the kitchen door, make an informed dining decision?
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Perhaps unknown to some, restaurant inspection information is publicly available online in Kansas. After reviewing this data a few eateries appear to be dirtier than others, but what constitutes a bad inspection?
Kathy Brower, an inspector for Riley County, answered some questions about the inspection process, and didn’t skip the dirty details.
Brower explained that foodservice establishments in Kansas are required to be inspected at least once a year. If a consumer contacts the health department with a complaint the establishment must be inspected within 24 hours. On the department website, consumers can see when an establishment has been inspected, and whether it was a routine inspection, customer complaint, or follow-up to address previous issues.
Brower additionally explained that during the inspection process the health inspector is looking for several things, some of which are categorized as non-critical violations and others as critical violations, and are based on likelihood to cause illness.
“Examples of non-critical violations are things like mildew issues, thawing messes or dust,” said Brower. “Critical violations are more based on health risk, like hot or cold holding temperatures, ensuring clean food contact surfaces, pest control, and proper food handling.“
Critical violations -- the problems that have a higher risk of making someone sick-- are enforced on a three-strike rule.
“[An establishment] is given a violation, and has two chances to correct this violation before they are assigned a fine. Fines range in severity, and are based on the type of violation. They can be between $100-500 per violation,” explained Brower.
What’s the grossest thing Brower’s ever seen during an inspection?
“Raw sewage backed-up in a kitchen, a wall-mounted veggie slicer that hadn’t been cleaned in over a year, and mice. There are so many different things it’s hard to say…There’ve been several instances of mold and mildew in bad places.”
So which restaurants in Manhattan are the dirtiest? Brower wouldn’t say, but after reviewing the inspection results online, a few appear to have more problems than others. To be considered a dirty diner an establishment had to have several violations, with a high number of critical violations, repeat violations or customer complaints being a red flag.
With inspection results for over 250 foodservice establishments in Riley County listed on the department website, it is difficult to pinpoint only three that fared the worst. The website includes results for all foodservice operations, including schools and hotels, not considered in the search for Manhattan’s dirtiest diner.
In the end, the three restaurants in Manhattan that appear dirtiest are: Grizzly’s Grill, Bobby T’s and Hunam Express.
When asked if inspection is a good thing, Anthony Parker, owner of Grizzly’s Grill, who landed on the list because of last year’s inspection with a whopping 11 critical violations and repeat pest problems, said, “Yes and no. Every time there’s a new health inspector things change. I could be doing something one way for 5 years, and a new inspector decides they don’t like that. Then I get written up.”
Parker explained he feels the inspection process may not be fully understood by consumers.
“The biggest thing is when people read about violations and they aren’t educated about what [a violation] means they can sound worse than what they are. Based on the inspection criteria you could go into any consumer’s household and shut them down.”
When asked about the critical violations found during last year’s inspection, Parker added, “[Critical violations] are corrected on site. A lot of the repeat [violations] come from turn over of staff… I could tell them until I’m blue in the face, but until inspection they don’t realize it’s the law they need to follow, and I say things for a reason.”
Should inspection results be available to the public? Parker feels there are some holes in the disclosure system,
“It depends on how bad you did. The last [inspection], I wish it would disappear… but I would prefer more of an explanation for consumers. For example, temperature violations are usually a degree or two off, but that doesn’t appear on the website.”
Overall Parker says the poor inspection ranking on the website has negatively affected business.
Bobby T’s landed on the dirty dining list for last year’s July inspection with 8 critical violations, and several inspections throughout the year. Though Greg Bollenbach, co-owner of Bobby T’s, didn’t wish to comment on any of the previous inspections, he did say the inspection process is both necessary and beneficial.
“You’ve got to do it. What [inspection] does is heightens your awareness. If they come in and find a problem with the hold temperatures of one food item it alerts you, and makes you check all your stuff. Overall it improves product safety and quality. And in the end, it’s a learning process for everyone,” explained Bollenbach.
The third restaurant on this dirty dining list, Hunam Express, was inspected seven times last year, four of which in response to customer complaints. Numerous critical violations were observed during nearly all of these inspections, including issues with employee handwashing. No one at the establishment was available for contact.
Though health inspector Brower didn’t give an opinion on the dirtiest diner in Manhattan, she did indicate that corporate establishments usually fair better than privately owned operations. Is this always the case? No, but this time around a corporately owned foodservice establishment didn’t land amoung the dirtiest diners in Manhattan. Why?
Kirk Keling, general manager of Applebee’s in Manhattan, who has had it’s fair share of violations in the past, explained that the health department isn’t the only one to inspect Applebee’s.
“We’re inspected quarterly by operations, semi-annually by Applebee’s, and then at least once a year by the health department,” explained Keling.
But would more inspections result in fewer violations? Unlikely. Is the information on the health department website enough for consumers to make a decision based on? Maybe, but as Brower explained, it is important to recognize that inspection is only a snapshot in time, and an establishment with one violation may not necessarily be safer than an establishment with five.
Regardless of where consumers chose to eat, having the information available online provides choice – those who wish to learn more about their local diner can check the website, and those who could care less, won’t.
Katie Filion and Brandon Speight were students in a food safety reporting class this past semester at Kansas State University
Restaurant inspection reports are available at:
http://kensas.kdhe.state.ks.us/pls/certop/FSresults4?SelStr=(psnam=;pcnty=;pcity=Manhattan;)
The Hills and restaurant inspection disclosure
The Hills is probably the worst thing on TV. My 14-year-old daughter watched the Hills marathons while in Florida with us last August. Now we watch it on DVR, Katie’s totally hooked, and daughter Courtlynn doesn’t even watch it.
With a baby, there’s a lot of bad TV on in the background.
On tonight’s episode LC and Stephanie go into some restaurant and there’s an A in the window. So yeah for restaurant inspection disclosure.
And someone tried to speak French during the episode. Amy said it was horrible.
Restaurant inspection in Calgary starting to work
The Calgary Herald reports that the number of complaints lodged by customers against food establishments in the Calgary region has jumped by almost six per cent in three years.
Figures also show a nearly 40 per cent increase in the number of restaurants, bars and grocery stores closed for food violations — ranging from thawing meat to mouse droppings in the kitchen — during the same period.
Last year, health inspectors temporarily closed 93 food outlets until they fixed the problems, according to statistics compiled by Alberta Health Services.
Rob Bradbury, director of environmental health for the Calgary region of Alberta Health Services, was quoted as saying,
“The numbers are huge. Our mandate is to protect public health. It’s a combination of our vigilance during routine inspections and input we receive from the public as a result of complaints.”
I picked up on that last theme during an interview with AM 660 radio in Calgary this morning, stating,
“The technology is out there – the blackberry I’m using to talk with you can take pictures and video. Just go on youtube and see the videos consumers have taken of yucky restaurant conditions.”
Show me the grade: Restaurant food safety ratings and consumer confidence
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Katie Filion will be giving a departmental seminar this afternoon about restaurant inspection disclosure systems, research needs, and how to make them better. Katie’s been accepted into graduate school at Kansas State beginning in May 2009, and is working in my lab until then.
For those in Manhattan (Kansas), Katie’s talk is at 3:30 p.m. in the Practice Management Center, 4th Floor, Trotter Hall, Kansas State University. The slides Katie will be using are available below.
barfblog.foodsafety.ksu.edu/uploads/file/Show me the score - Feb 2009.ppt
KATIE FILION: Sudbury should make scores public, eh? Batta-boom batta-bing.
Last month while visiting friends in Sudbury, Ontario, we ate at East Side Mario’s restaurant – I love the unlimited salad and breadsticks. Though I didn’t have any problems with my meal, a patron who ate lunch at the Lasalle boulevard restaurant Dec. 30 did, and voiced a complaint to the Sudbury District Health Unit, according to the Sudbury Star.
"The patron complained about employees coughing on food, improper employee hand washing and a lack of hot water. A visit by the health inspector the next day didn’t reveal any violations, but it was recommended the restaurant review food education and handling practices with its employees. After a follow-up inspection resulted in a charge for lack of sanitizer in the mechanical glass washer, vice-president of operations at East Side Mario’s decided to close the restaurant. Employees from East Side Mario’s head office were sent in to help the local site return to company standards.
Though charges for the Lasalle Boulevard restaurant were made public it’s not typical of health and safety infractions in the Sudbury district. Here people must phone and ask about any problems at a restaurant or food store and receive either a verbal or written report about inspection reports, closures and convictions, said Stacey Laforest, manager of the health unit's environmental division.
There are better ways to communicate restaurant inspection results than simply disclosing information to curious consumers who call in. Many health units in North America are making results available via websites, like the Toronto, Ontario website DineSafe (http://app.toronto.ca/food2/DineSafeMain); or mandatory posting of inspection score cards (in the form of letter, grade, color, or smiley-face schemes) near the entrance of premises. Increasing the availability and display of food safety information will raise overall awareness, and push food establishments to better themselves. The Greater Sudbury district could benefit from such disclosure methods.
Katie Filion is a soon-to-be graduate student at Kansas State University who currently resides in Doug and Amy's basement.
'I'd like a large pizza with pepperoni, mushrooms and band-aid'
A pizza topped with a band-aid has landed a southern Sydney Dominos Pizza on an Australian state government's name and shame list of food safety infringements.
The New South Wales Food Authority name and shame website currently contains 317 businesses with 502 fines issued.
Primary Industries Ian Macdonald said the list was designed to stop individuals and companies that cut corners on food safety for consumers.
"The fines have been for a range of breaches including dirty premises, allowing pests into food preparation areas and inappropriate temperature control of foods.”
The website, has had over 1.4 million visitors since it was launched in July.
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."
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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
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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."
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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
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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 ...
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... 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
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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.
