For the love of God, take it back and next time use a thermometer
Restaurants are always faced with the problem of rapid staff turnover rates resulting in an on-going regime of constant training. Fair enough but are new staff being trained in food safety? In certain provinces only one staff in five on any given shift are required to have some sort of food safety training through a professional organization. Theoretically, on-site managers will have taken the course in the hopes of shedding some of that knowledge to their staff. The concern, however, is that some managers simply don’t care about food safety and information is not being relayed to front line service staff. That’s when typically the public, you, barf. It is one thing to train someone on the basics of food safety in a classroom setting but it is another thing to change ones’ behaviours and habits when dealing with issues on food safety. For instance, this is a picture of an undercooked chicken burger served to a customer during a lunch rush. The manager was more concerned about dealing with the influx of customers than paying attention to food safety, as a result the cooks followed suit and a raw burger was served. Managers have a responsibility to promote safe food practices and encourage staff to do the same. It apparently seems that attitudes and behaviours tend to change when something horrible happens, like a foodborne outbreak. It is time to be proactive and not reactive.
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Rats, mice, roaches, the need for more inspectors
Astonishing and amazing, like the recent Pet Shop Boys concert I attended, what one can find during a restaurant inspection.
KITV writes
In mid-August, a customer complained about finding a roach in a hamburger from a Honolulu fast-food restaurant. Two days later, an inspector found dead roaches in a plastic paper sheet cover at the same restaurant.
The state sends inspectors on unannounced inspections of restaurants. KITV followed along as inspector Raena Nishimura checked the conditions at Downtown Coffee, a coffee bar off Fort Street Mall.
"Just looking in the cupboards for any signs of droppings of rodents, roach droppings," Nishimura said.
There were none of those at Downtown Coffee, but an inspector found a live rat under the sink at a Kalihi noodle shop recently.
At another downtown restaurant, an inspector found mold in a soda dispenser, just a few days after a customer complained of finding mold in some lemonade.
The only way to find violations and get dirty restaurants to clean up their act is to inspect them on a regular basis.
"Our supervisor would like to have our establishments inspected twice a year, but that's impossible," Nishimura said.
It is impossible because budget cuts have left a small number of inspectors to handle thousands of restaurants.
I couldn’t agree more, public health inspections are a culmination of hard work integrating a myriad of different scientific disciplines. As a result, they take time and more resources are needed if we are to take food safety seriously.
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.
Supermarket Guru says stickers on clamshells a good food safety idea to go
Supermarket Guru picked up on our food safety stickers for takeout food and suggested it was one way retailers could turn food safety into a competitive advantage, and wrest takeout business from nearby restaurants.
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Which was exactly one of our thoughts when we began experimenting with food safety stickers about five years ago.
While SupermarketGuru.com doesn’t know the full details of their proposed label, we suggest that besides basic date and serving information, it also clearly states whether a food might contain allergens like peanuts or gluten. In our opinion, supermarkets have failed so far to truly differentiate themselves in prepared foods and easy takeout. This is one value-added step that could help food stores retain the takeout volume that fell in their laps when the economy cratered, and people curbed their restaurant visits. They didn’t really earn the windfall, but they got it, and now they have to address consumer concerns about food safety in order to burnish their image as takeout sources.
Perhaps a special opportunity for this approach is in the small-format stores modeled after Tesco’s Fresh & Easy, which emphasize takeout offerings, and are already battling convenience stores, which are stepping up their meal programs. Safe food-handling stickers could add professionalism to the displays and confidence in consumers, and make the prepared foods section a more frequent destination.
We'll work with anyone who is interested in developing the sticker concept for their own food business -- large or small. Any new sticker would have a different phone number and website than those depicted (below) and would be based on research tailored to a specific operation.
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Restaurant inspections:announced or unannounced...
Restaurant inspections are generally carried out unannounced by a health inspector. In this way one can obtain a snap shot of what is actually going on at that time. Some of the expressions on employees’ faces when I arrive and announce myself are priceless, makes me feel so wanted at times. Now I know how Chuck Norris feels when he enters an establishment. So, I decided to perform a restaurant inspection that was scheduled to eliminate the wonderful element of surprise. When a health inspector schedules an inspection, it is assumed that managers’, food operators’, supervisors and anyone else involved with that facility are going to take extra measures to ensure that things are cleaned up and everything is in check. I sometimes favor scheduled inspections because if I go in and find something wrong, for instance, mixing soap with chlorine sanitizer, then it becomes more apparent that staff are unaware or misinformed on this issue. More importantly, as the health inspector develops a relationship with the chef and spends time explaining why certain practices are right or wrong, both the establishment and the customer benefits. .jpg)
Chinese restaurant to close for good after Salmonella outbreak, failed repeat inspection
Ruby Chinese Restaurant, the beleaguered eatery at the source of a Salmonella outbreak that sickened at least 22 people and possibly contributed to the death of another, will close for good.
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The Toronto Star reports that word is spreading in north Scarborough's Chinese community that the immensely popular restaurant will not reopen after a recent salmonella outbreak.
At an emergency meeting on Sunday, according to a source, the restaurant's three owners are said to have decided to file for bankruptcy on Monday, and have hired an accountant to prepare for auctioning off furniture and equipment.
The 17-year-old restaurant was closed by Toronto Public Health in early October. It failed another inspection two days later, with health officials citing cockroaches and a very dirty floor.
The owners were told by a pest control firm that ending the cockroach problem would require treating the entire single-storey strip mall at 1571 Sandhurst Circle, near Finch Ave. E. and McCowan Rd. As well, customers were cancelling the multi-course banquets that made up the bulk of its business.
Cook your own food at Glasgow restaurant an invitation to health problems?
The Glaswegian reports that diners are being invited to make their own dishes at a new Glasgow restaurant.
Cookie will be the first restaurant in Scotland to invite customers into the kitchen to prepare and cook the food.
They will have access to quality ingredients and be guided by a trained chef.
The eaterie is the brainchild of Scots-Italian architect Domenico Del Priore.
He hopes the concept of "horizontal cooking" will break down barriers between chef and diner.
Inspired by open family restaurants in Italy, Domenico predicts "self cooking" will be the next big thing.
How will health inspectors view the latest trend? Especially with cross-contamination issues.
The Fatal Restaurant
A barfblog.com fan sent along this shot of the aptly named, Fatal Restaurant in Budapest (which apparently means wooden plate in Hungarian).
He writes:
While I've always tried to err on the paranoid side while cooking, barfblog has taught me a few things, and I wash my hands a lot more often now too. I can also now make a burger that got to 160 that my wife will still eat cause it's not all dried out!
I saw this today on one of those compilations of unfortunate restaurant names and thought of you ;)
It's like a bromance.
Fat Duck criticizes health types at chef conference
From the this-guy-just-can’t-shut up file, Heston Blumenthal whined, err, told a conference in London yesterday that the Health Protection Agency (HPA) should do more to support the industry, stating,
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“There is a real lack of support to restaurants from the HPA when it comes to handling something like a norovirus outbreak and it is only because of the status of the Fat Duck that we survived this. If we were a small independent restaurant, we would have been forced to close as a result of this. Our industry is so fragile and there is so little support.”
The HPA released a report on its investigation into the norovirus outbreak at the Fat Duck, which affected more than 500 diners, earlier this month stating the official cause was contaminated shellfish. Among the findings:
• oysters were served raw;
• razor clams may not have been appropriately handled or cooked;
• the outbreak continued for at least six weeks (between January 6 and February 22) because of ongoing transmission at the restaurant - which may have occurred through continuous contamination of foods prepared in the restaurant or by person-to-person spread between staff and diners or a mixture of both
; and,
• several weaknesses in procedures at the restaurant may have contributed to ongoing transmission including delayed response to the incident, staff working when they should have been off sick and using the wrong environmental cleaning products
Blumenthal went on to tell the conference that both the experts appointed by the Fat Duck and those by its insurers believed that there were a number of flaws in the HPA report, including its criticism of the restaurant’s staff sickness policy and its use of anti-bacterial cleaning agents.
“Some of the elements in the report were supposition,” he said.
Blumenthal also criticized HPA for the way it released the report, arguing he and his team of insurers and legal experts were given no time to analyse its findings before it was released to the public.
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“We were told we would be given 24 hours to analyse the report before it would be released to the public but in fact we were only given three hours,” he said.
That’s more warning than the 529 people who were barfing on widely expensive food porn received.
And Heston, there’s nothing that builds consumer confidence more than have a government agency in tight with the industry it regulates. It’s the Health Protection Agency, not the Boost Restaurant Revenues Agency. HPA is to protect human health, and encourage places like restaurants to do the same. Making 529 customers sick is bad for business, but not the fault of the HPA.
This guy provides so much material I don’t have to resort to calling him the love child of Alton Brown and longtime Toronto Maple Leaf hockey player Mats Sundin.
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The B at Peppone restaurant doesn't stand for Britney
Being an avid fan of stalker-esque gossip sites, I was interested to see the popular celebrity eatery Peppone appear in my Google Alerts this morning. The likes of Britney Spears and Mark Wahlberg have dined at the Brentwood, California restaurant, and in the past the A grade at the restaurant didn’t just invite A-list celebrities.
A recent inspection, however, revealed a drop from A to B, reports Brentwood Blogged. Included in the inspection findings was evidence of a major cockroach infestation.
Will the drop from A to B cause a drop in patronage as well?
Another E. coli O157 outbreak, again in Wales, linked to seaside restaurant, no one told the public
Madeleine Brindley of Wales Online reports this morning that five people have contracted E.coli O157 after eating at a restaurant in Tenby.
Two children from the same family, who live in West Yorkshire, have been confirmed with the potentially lethal bug.
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A further two men from Newport, in South East Wales and Pembrokeshire, and a woman from Carmarthenshire also fell ill.
It is understood all five people ate at the same food premises, which has not been named, between July 31 and August 15.
It is understood that the restaurant closed voluntarily but has now reopened.
Dirty doggie dining in Manhattan, Kansas
When I first opened the Kansas State Collegian yesterday morning, the following headline popped out: “Green, pet-friendly bar opens in Aggieville.” The story started:.jpg)
“Tail wagging, mouth drooling, riled up with excitement stands Tank the dog, welcoming bar patrons this Saturday to the newly renovated the Loft Bar and Grill.”
“We will be having many different types of animals outside the Loft — dogs, goats and even miniature Clydesdales.” Jacobson said. “Our bar is very pet-friendly.”
Actually, the Kansas Food Code prohibits animals on food establishments, unless they are assistance animals, according to code reference 6-501.115 found here.
Did
The local health department inspectors would consider bringing pets to a restaurant a critical violation. Last year, Tanks Tavern, also in Aggieville, was cited two critical violations including: “live dog in bar and dog food stored under sink.”
As Amy and Doug wrote, “tripping, biting, dog fights, barking, allergies, and the transfer of dangerous microorganisms such as E. coli, salmonella and cryptosporidium” are some of the risks that come along with doggie dining.
Restaurants in Florida can apply for permits to allow dogs on their patio, if they meet certain conditions. Employees must not touch pets while handling food, and if they do, they must wash their hands. Customers should also wash their hands before eating and keep their pets off tables, chairs, and tables.
As far as I know, we are still in Kansas, where doggie dining is clearly prohibited.
These are my puppies:
First lady dined at D.C. restaurant that got lousy inspection
With all the Obama food groupies, someone should have probably figured out before now that the first lady, first vice-lady and D.C.’s mayor and spouse ate at a Washington restaurant earlier this year that sucked at food safety.
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But kudos to the Washington Post for highlighting the failures in basic sanitation at a local eatery – the same failures other mere mortals are subjected to on a daily basis.
Toronto, Los Angeles, Sydney, London, Copenhagen: World-class cities that have all come to embrace some form of restaurant inspection disclosure for the consuming public. Maybe Washington, D.C. will one day join the rank of truly world-class cities, and provide basic information to taxpaying citizens.
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Stick it in for safety
The first thing I bought when we arrived in Florida a couple of weeks ago was a meat thermometer: groceries, wine, toilet paper – and a digital, tip-sensitive meat thermometer.
Can’t cook burgers without them.
Yesterday I ventured from our Venice Beach hideaway to the University of Florida in Gainesville to hang out with my friend Michael Batz and deliver a seminar at the Emerging Pathogens Institute about food safety culture stuf.
Michael and I went to lunch at some Spanish/Cuban place that seemed quite friendly, so, being the nerd I am, I ordered a hamburger.
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The server asked me how I would like it, and I asked, what are my options?
She said however I wanted it (that’s really what she said).
I said, 160 F.
She said, we don’t do that.
I said, well-done.
Stick it in.
Flip flops or foodborne illness: pick your poison
Flip flops are gross microbiological factories loaded with E. coli, Staph aureus and fecal matter that will soon be returning to university campuses around the U.S.
Duh.
At least CBS medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton had the sense to say,
"Have there been people who have gotten some pretty bad skin infections because they've been wearing flip flops or walked barefoot? Sure.”
Ashton said in her opinion, food poisoning, which can contain bacteria, is a more significant health risk than germy flip flops.
Like the latest restaurant inspections from Dade County, home of Miami, the other coast in Florida.
• The Oasis Restaurant (19 Harbor Drive, Key Biscayne) - Critical. Stop Sale issued on potentially hazardous food due to temperature abuse.
• Georges (3145 Commodore Plaza, Miami) - Critical. Stop Sale issued on potentially hazardous food due to temperature abuse.
• Good Way Cafeteria (10932 NW 7 Ave) - Critical. Observed rodent activity as evidenced by rodent droppings found. 30 plus fresh droppings under table in kitchen.
• Casa Panza (1620 SW 8 St, Miami) - Critical. Observed rodent activity as evidenced by rodent droppings found. oberved about 30 + shiny and moist dropping on floor behind coffee worktable.and about 25+ on floor behind stove in kitchen , and about 10+ in floor in bar area back dining room. fresh and moist.
• San Miguel Market Cafeteria (2600 NW 21st Ave) - Critical. Violation: 35A-05-1 Observed roach activity as evidenced by 32 plus live roaches found in kitchen by the cookline. 3 live roaches behind reachin freezer next to steam table, 2 live roaches inside ice bin, 2 live roaches inside to go cup box by bathroom.
Restaurant inspection changes in Philadelphia
Restaurant inspectors in Philadelphia have abandoned the "floors, walls, ceilings" focus and instead are phasing in a more scientific, "risk-based" approach that emphasizes food workers' knowledge and behavior - do they know how contamination is spread and how to prevent it? - and calls for more frequent inspections of eateries that pose greater risks.
Don Sapatkin of the Philadelphia Inquirer writes this morning that Philadelphia is playing catchup in adopting changes that most counties around here have already made, in some cases many years ago. Yet the city's new approach is expected to mean more inspections of the 12,621 establishments that sell or serve food - four times a year at institutional kitchens, for example - than most places.
Still, this region is hardly progressive compared to places like Toronto, which posts red, yellow or green signs in restaurants, or Los Angeles (A-B-Cs), or Denmark (smiley faces). No county in the Philadelphia region requires restaurants to post full inspection reports on location.
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It's not clear that food is any safer when there is greater transparency or even more frequent inspections, "but it does get people to think about food safety," said Doug Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University who operates barfblog.
Don Schaffner, a professor of food microbiology at Rutgers University, said inspections traditionally have focused as much on appearance as on cooking temperatures. And they often made little distinction between sushi bars that serve raw fish and drug stores that sell prepackaged food.
"What we've learned over time is, not everything is equal.”
Ben Chapman, a food-safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University and a contributor to barfblog said prevention is really about "the culture of the restaurant”
Meaning, says Powell,
"If two workers are from the same restaurant (and go to the bathroom) and (only) one washes his hands, I want one to say to the other: 'Dude, wash your hands.' "
Stickers for takeaway food a hit in Dubai
Food such as takeout or takeaway, that is initially prepared in a restaurant but is consumed in an individual’s home, may be a venue to target with safe-food handling messages. Earlier this decade, both Chicago-based Francesca Restaurants and Boston-based Buca Di Beppo Restaurants reported anecdotal success placing food safety labels on containers of takeout food.
In 2004, my group undertook research to:
• examine restaurant managements’ experience of using a safe food-handling label on takeout food;
• explore managements’ food safety concerns;
• determine the value of consumer safe-food handling labels to managers;
• establish perceived label effectiveness; and,
• identify challenges with implementation.
For our study, we defined take-out as food procured from a casual dining restaurant (i.e. sit-down restaurant) but eaten elsewhere, including food ordered as take-out and leftover food packaged to be taken home. The label we developed is right (above) and left (note, the phone line and web site don’t work anymore).
The research paper describing that work has been accepted by a peer-reviewed scientific journal and will be published in the near future.
However, the public health types in Dubai discovered over the weekend the same thing we found: most consumers and restaurateurs like the idea.
Our bites.ksu.edu Dubai correspondent contacted Ben and me about stickers on takeaway, and we sent along what we had developed. Today, the Khaleej Times reports,
The Dubai Municipality is planning to encourage all restaurants in the emirate to issue advisories to consumers on safe handling of takeaway food.
The decision follows a similar initiative by a popular south Indian restaurant group that attaches red stickers to its takeaway bags at its two outlets in Dubai. A municipality official applauded the group’s move and said the civic body intended to support such initiatives by other restaurants as well.
Director of Food Control Department, Khalid Mohammed Sherif, told the Khaleej Times,
“We are encouraging more and more food outlets to put such messages along with takeaway food to ensure that the customer handles the food properly. We will be providing all of them with modified instructions for customers to handle food taken away.”
He said the modified versions of the advisories will include the temperature at which food items have to be stored and the duration within which they have to be consumed, depending on the types of ingredients.
Below is a draft of the information intended for consumers.
Dubai restaurant requires signed disclaimer with purchase
What a cop-out.
After the tragic death of Nathan, 5, and his sister, Chelsea, 7, in connection with home-delivered Chinese food in June, the importance of food safety should have come into sharp focus for restaurateurs in Dubai.
On the off-chance that restaurant owners didn’t catch the news, the Dubai Municipality stepped up restaurant inspections and conducted a food safety awareness campaign under the banner "Food Safety is our Priority."
Establishments like Kempinski Hotel in Mall of the Emirates were given the opportunity to demonstrate to customers that food safety was indeed a priority.
Instead, as Gulf News reports,
“Hotel Kempinski in Mall of the Emirates is getting its customers to sign a disclaimer note stating that its restaurants would not be responsible for the quality of food once it is taken out of their premises.”
The disclaimer reads,
"Please note that the Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates takes no responsibility whatsoever for any food or beverage bought from the hotel or any outlets of the hotel for personal consumption.
"This is due to the fact that the Kempinski Hotel Mall of the Emirates has no more control or any way of ascertaining the safety and hygienic condition of this food and beverage once outside the premises. Please sign the waiver below to indicate your acceptance of the terms stipulated.
"Otherwise the hotel is unable to permit any food or beverage to be purchased."
The establishment’s haughty and self-serving culture is absolutely disgusting and leaves me with very little faith in the safety of its food.
Another outlet, Calicut Paragon in Karama, invested their resources in stickers for take-out bags that advise consumers to eat their food within two hours of purchase—a step that suggests a shared responsibility for the safety of food and that I find a little more palatable.
I agree with this guy:
"I think it is completely unethical to make customers sign disclaimers like that. It is good to safeguard the business, but not at the cost of displeasing customers," said Ronald D'Souza, operations manager at Sofra Worldwide - a firm that owns restaurant chains like Gelato, NaanPlus and Uno Chicago Grill.
"From your side, you have to ensure that quality and hygiene standards are maintained at the highest levels. But as we are in the business of food, there is an element of risk that you must take," D'Souza said.
Kempinski Hotel should step up to the plate and recognize that selling microbiologically safe food is a good way to protect your business, and showing a commitment to food safety is a good way to promote it.
Beware of pizza in Halmsted, Sweden
The pizza in Halmstad, Sweden apparently sucks.
Food safety inspections allegedly found that almost 90 per cent of establishments that serve pizza failed to meet the minimum levels of hygiene.
The Hallands-Posten reported that just nine of the 70 restaurants in town that serve pizza made the grade. Food safety inspectors were genuinely shocked when they tallied the results of their unannounced checks on restaurants in the coastal town of Halmstad this spring. With the vast majority of the town’s restaurants miserably failing basic hygiene, the inspectors were left wondering what went wrong.
Food safety inspector Ulrika Cederberg told the Hallands-Posten,
“We’re quite shocked. We actually didn’t think it would be this bad. There were nineteen places that didn’t have access to a functioning washbasin with soap and paper towels.”
Among the most appalling findings was one restaurant that was infested with a species of beetle that lives off dried fish, meat and cheese. Inspectors shut the place down immediately.
Another restaurant was given a temporary reprieve when the staff stayed up all night to try and clean up the many failures given out by inspectors. Storing food in toilets and no washbasins were major failings at that restaurant.
Food service food safety failures made public in Sydney; public benefits
The Sydney Morning Herald this morning – this being Sunday morning in Australia – has a huge feature on the effects of the New South Wales state Food Authority taking a more, uh, vigilant approach to restaurant inspections.
The newspaper concludes that 40 per cent of all restaurants, takeaways and other food businesses in NSW were caught breaching one or more of the critical food handling practices when first visited by an inspector.
That may not be an entirely fair representation. Lots of places have at least one critical violation, and in the U.S., how a critical violation is defined can differ from state-to-state, and even county-to-county. There needs to be some sort of control or comparative group to determine whether that number is high or not.
But it sure sounds gross.
Inspection rates are woefully inadequate in some local councils, and there is often a lack of follow-up.
Anna Cenfi, part-owner of the Belli Bar, got it right when she said inspections conducted in the past few months were more thorough than in previous years, but that she had received three letters warning that a food safety inspection was imminent.
"I think that warning people that they are coming to inspect is ridiculous. They should just spot check everyone, even if it's just once a year. I'm not worried for myself but I know a lot of dodgy places out there."
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Journalist Mathew Moore does clearly state that whatever the limitations, “making this information public we can now expect improvements in standards that transparency and public scrutiny of government information can bring. The Food Authority deserves praise for releasing this information and giving the public far more data than it can get in any other state. It's an important addition to the name and shame list … With its website and release of the statewide data, NSW has gone further than any other state.
“Yet it still lags behind many cities in Britain and the US, where the results of every restaurant inspection are posted online. New York City even allows consumers to search restaurants according to their number of violation points.
“Governments there have learnt what the NSW Government is now only beginning to realise; there are major public health benefits in shining a public light into the kitchens of every food business that serves the public.”
Furry marmot joins diners at Wash. restaurant
Diners at a restaurant in Prosser, Wash., were startled Monday when a furry marmot wandered through the front door and settled into a corner.
City Administrator Charlie Bush told the Tri-City Herald the big rodents have long been a problem in the central Washington wine town, adding,
"I know there's a lot of marmots in Prosser, there's no question. They're happy marmots. They're fat, they're having a good time."
Bush said several people in the restaurant helped build a makeshift tunnel out of advertising signs, and with some gentle prodding, the animal "just took off like a shot."
Bonnie Hunt knows cross-contamination
Ever since reading this infosheet on a study of the bacteria and viruses found on lemon wedges, I’ve ordered my waters without them. I learned today that Bonnie Hunt is also one whose knowledge of microbiology has heightened her awareness of cross-contamination.
An encore presentation of the Bonnie Hunt Show today included a bit about Bonnie's background with microbiology and how it affects her experiences at restaurants today.
Before her acting career took off, Bonnie worked for several years as a nurse. While training for that, she had to "look through microscopes" and "learn about handwashing"--particularly that friction is more effective than soap at removing bacteria and viruses.
When dining out, Bonnie said she notices when servers touch a refill pitcher to the rim of her glass... and then do the same 
with other glasses throughout the restaurant. She joked that it's like making out with everyone there.
She also related a story about a family eating near her at a local restaurant. The table the family was seated at had two ketchup bottles. A child picked up the first bottle, drank from it, and then set it back down on the table. Another child picked up the second bottle, tried unsuccessfully to pour ketchup out of it, and so used the straw from their drinking glass to get it flowing.
Knowledge is such a powerful thing.
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.
Restaurants challenge 'name and shame' in Sydney
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that a Sydney restaurant is considering legal action against the NSW Food Authority over its controversial name-and-shame website.
Satasia opened in Balmain 28 years ago and has become one of the most popular restaurants in Sydney's inner west.
The owner, Andrew Lum, says that reputation is in tatters after his eatery was fined by the Food Authority, then included on its name-and-shame list alongside rat- and cockroach-infested restaurants.
The database was launched in July to try to improve hygiene standards.
But Mr Lum and other restaurateurs argue its format is unfair.
Several businesses, including Satasia, have consulted lawyers about suing the State Government.
But the Food Authority appears to be immune from legal action, including defamation, under section 133G of the 2003 Food Act, which states: "No liability is incurred by the state, the minister or the Food Authority, for publishing in good faith any information contained on a register."
A University of Sydney senior law lecturer, David Rolph, said,
"The Food Authority clearly takes the view that when you balance it out between the rights of the trader and the right of the public not to consume food prepared in unsafe places, public interest has to prevail."
Lavender Blue Cafe, at McMahons Point, joined the list in November after receiving a fine for a broken probe thermometer. The manager, Andrew Menczel, said: "The list is a good idea in principle but to lump everyone together is wrong. There should be clearer categories for different offences.”
Food fight: Massachusetts school cafeteria inspections suck
Sara Brown, Husna Haq, and Hannah McBride, journalism students at Boston University, got their feature on school cafeteria food safety inspections published in the Boston Globe this morning. They’d been working on it for much of last semester, and I spent some time on the phone with Sara and provided some background. Good for them; glad the Globe is still around to publish such features. Highlights below.
At an elementary school in Billerica, the sewage smell was so strong it forced a nauseated health inspector to leave after 15 minutes. During a five-week period in Framingham, 17 mice were caught in an elementary school's kitchen storage area. And in a Foxborough middle school, a complaint of hair in the food prompted an inquiry by a local health inspector.
School cafeteria inspections in communities throughout Greater Boston last year found problems ranging from expired milk and rotting meat to disposable utensils and a meat slicer stored in employee bathrooms.
But, in many ways, that was the good news.
Those cafeterias were inspected, their problems identified for correction. Cafeterias in 7 percent of private and public elementary and secondary schools across Massachusetts were never inspected at all in the 2007-2008 school year, according to state records. And 38 percent were inspected just once, though federal law requires two health inspections annually.
The Massachusetts data gathered from school districts tell only part of the story.
A closer look at more than 1,000 schools in 157 communities in Greater Boston reveals a slipshod system of local enforcement with virtually no state or federal oversight. …
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In Massachusetts, school cafeteria inspections fall under the jurisdiction of local boards of health, typically small groups that are either elected or appointed, depending on the community. There are no minimum education or experience requirements to be a health inspector; candidates need only pass a state-approved performance test and a written exam, which can be taken online through the Food and Drug Administration. The state also sets no minimum qualifications for directors of local boards of health.
"The guy who inspects your car has more training" than some health inspectors, said Michael Moore, food safety coordinator at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. …
In August, Lynn health inspector Frank McNulty was called to Lynn English High School to investigate a foul odor. When he opened the cafeteria freezer, a puff of steam reeking of rotting meat gushed out. "I nearly passed out," McNulty said. "I've never dealt with something like that before."
The freezer had shut down, but the condenser was still operating, drawing in hot summer air and cooking hundreds of pounds of meat for weeks. McNulty and food service employees called dozens of cleaning services, but none would take the job. Finally, he contacted a company that cleans up crime scenes.
"They must do dead bodies," he said, "so I figured they'd do this."
UK celebrity restaurant Quaglino's closes after woman celebrating 50th birthday dies, possibly related to oysters
A leading London restaurant has been forced to close after a female diner died of a mystery illness following a 50th birthday celebration there.
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Quaglino's was shut by management this week after the death of the Denise Martin who dined at the eatery with five friends on Saturday night.
The Health Protection Agency says it is investigating food poisoning as a possible cause of death.
Mother-of-two Ms Martin was found dead in her bed by partner Roy Johal,52, on Tuesday - three days after the meal which saw her eat oysters for the first time.
Last night the restaurant refused to comment, other than to confirm it had reopened following a two-day closure.
Underground restaurants in St. Louis: how bored are Americans?
Food pornography is nothing new. Neither are so-called underground restaurants. That the St. Louis Post-Dispatch thinks both may be new and newsworthy may help explain the decline of American newspapers (and look at that cool arm decal in this pic from the Post, right, below).
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Although underground restaurants have been popping up around the country for several years, this incarnation, launched last summer, appears to be the first of its kind in St. Louis.
Diners learn about an upcoming monthly dinner only through word of mouth. They sign up on a website using a pass code. On the day of the dinner, they get an e-mail telling them where to go. Sometimes it's a private house; other times, it's a rented space. …
Health department officials in the St. Louis area say underground restaurants violate health codes because they lack the proper inspections and permits.
"Even if a church sets up a buffet for a charity event, they need a permit," said Craig LeFebvre, a spokesman for the St. Louis County Health Department.
If someone invites friends to a private dining event in St. Louis County, they're not violating any laws. But if they put up any signs — including a website — and the event is open to a paying public, they need a permit, explained Gerrin Cheek Butler of the county's health department.
The chef, who asked not to be identified, said,
"The whole thing is an experience. It's not just this consumer thing, where you show up, order, and get pushed out the door an hour later."
Correct. It’s a way to charge a premium for porn.
Suspected norovirus at south Sioux City, Nebraska, restaurant
A restaurant/bar in South Sioux City has closed down voluntarily to disinfect its premises after dozens of people became ill after eating there, according to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.
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The restaurant/bar at the Marina Inn has closed temporarily on the advice of health officials.
Symptoms are consistent with a norovirus, a highly contagious virus that is spread person to person or by food.
Dirty restaurant restrooms send customers out the door
Rating bathrooms is one of those stories that just won’t go away.
But are restrooms really indicative of restaurant cleanliness?
The Detroit Free Press reports this morning that an online survey of 2,175 adults by Harris Interactive last year found that 88% of people who visit restaurants believe that restroom cleanliness reflects the restaurant's overall hygiene, including sanitary standards in the kitchen and prep areas.
But is that assumption correct -- or just a myth?
Health Department officials contacted about the survey said they couldn't say because they've never studied the subject -- and they wouldn't speculate.
Ben says that while dirty bathrooms can be gross, like the gotcha moments on hidden camera programs, there really isn't any information that suggests a place with a dirty bathroom is any more or less likely to cause an outbreak than a place with a clean bathroom. Risk-based inspection systems focus on factors that lead to illness as identified by the CDC and WHO -- not the floors, walls and ceilings, and how many flies are on a fly strip.
Bad idea: running a restaurant without water, people get sick, owners fined $15,000
Two co-owners of the Yaman Restaurant, a St. Catharines, Ontario, restaurant linked to a 2007 E. coli outbreak, were fined $7,500 each for selling food that made customers sick.
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The problems started when Asaad and Daoud continued to run their business on May 19, 2007, despite the fact water to the restaurant was cut off due to a water-main break.
The restaurant was shut down by the region that month after several people got sick, but reopened with a clean bill of health in August that year.
The owners also pleaded guilty on March 4 to failing to provide hot and cold running water in the food-preparation area of the restaurant.
Australian state to require food safety training for staff
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.
So it seems reasonable to have some minimal training for those who prepare food for public consumption.
The Australian state of New South Wales, which includes Sydney, has decided to agree, and will insist that every restaurant have at least one staff member who has completed a certified course in food handling.
NSW Primary Industry Minister Ian Macdonald said the State Government is introducing the laws after a spate of outbreaks, adding,
"Thirty-six per cent of food-borne illness outbreaks in NSW are the result of poor food handling. We believe that this is costing in effect $150 million in terms of lost productivity."
Unfortunately, what constitutes a certified course is often crap. The next step is to evaluate what works and what doesn’t – what kind of training actually translates into food service staff practicing safe food prep.
One dead man, one naked man extricated from Colorado exhaust vents last week
Last Thursday morning, 49-year-old electrician Michael Goodspeed was found dead in an exhaust vent of a restaurant in Steamboat Springs, CO.
The Associated Press reports,
Goodspeed became wedged in a tapering section of the vent. The Routt County Coroner says it appears Goodspeed died of "positional asphyxiation".
Goodspeed and his coworkers were staying at the restaurant while doing work there before it officially opened. He climbed into the vent in an attempt to enter the restaurant after he was apparently locked out.
The next day, the manager of a Blackjack Pizza in Denver—about 150 miles away—discovered a younger man close to meeting the same fate.
According to the Denver Post, 21-year-old Andrew Baca was found dangling above the oven yelling, “Help me, help me,” after being stuck in a vent for five to six hours.
Firefighters were able to extricate Baca from the vent with only minor cuts and abrasions, though his clothes were removed in the rescue effort.
Police said the intruder, though lucky to be alive, was being held for investigation of burglary and criminal mischief.
The AP noted that the restaurant was closed later that day. It is unknown whether this was by order of the police force or the health department.
Plastic wrap, food poisoning for Ramsay diner
Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay's five star Claridge's Hotel in London allegedly served up a meal containing cling film – which is apparently British for plastic wrap – to Noelie Kline, who apparently is some sort of U.K. reality TV regular.
Ms Klineberg says she believes she had suffered food poisoning and has reported the matter to Westminster Council's environmental health officers.
"It's all very well Gordon Ramsay going off to America to sort out restaurants but he ought to get his own house in order first."
Fat Duck was correct to close after diners sickened
The Fat Duck is apparently a fancy restaurant in Berkshire, UK, run by TV chef Heston Blumenthal; it was voted Best Restaurant in the World by fellow chefs in 2005, or something.
The Independent reports that Blumenthal (right) spent a sleepless night before deciding to close the restaurant last Tuesday in the face of a steady stream – between 30 and 40 – of complaints from customers who suffered vomiting, diarrhoea and flu-like symptoms.
"I made the decision to be transparent about it. Who knows if it was the right or wrong decision to make. But my gut reaction, the moral feeling about it all, was that's what we had to do. It was an incredibly emotional decision."
But tests for viral infections and food poisoning have proved negative and there is speculation that the winter outbreak of norovirus could be the real reason why they became sick.
Yeah, check out the staff. And handwashing facilities. And suppliers. And places chefs rarely think to go when it comes to basic microbiology, from farm-to-fork.
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Ways to get a restaurant closed: killing mice with cooking utensils
A customer at the Nigerian Kitchen, 1363 W. Wilson, Chicago, called 311 after claiming to see staff using cooking utensils to kill mice.
The restaurant was closed Monday after city health inspectors found mouse feces throughout the restaurant, cockroaches crawling on a wall and wastewater backing up from three clogged sinks in the kitchen.
Inspectors also found a mop sink filled with dozens of tomatoes and green peppers -- cut and whole -- and ordered them discarded,
Chicagoans who believe a restaurant or other licensed food establishment is operating in an unsafe manner are encouraged to call 311.
What's the frequency Kenneth? Douchebags in a restaurant
I never liked the band R.E.M. Everyone who thought they were cool in university was into the supposedly alternative sound of R.E.M. Their first single came out the year I started university as an undergrad, 1981. I was busy catching up on Neil Young and Rolling Stones from the early 1970s, and thought R.E.M. sorta sucked, especially the lyrical nonsense of frontman Michael Stipe. I liked the distorted guitar of What’s the Frequency Kenneth, and the mandolin of Losing My Religion, but the rest blows.
Mario Batali is a celebrity chef in New York who practices terrible cross-contamination when preparing food. I’ve got the video. And he’s showed up in barfblog.
His "Spotted Pig" restaurant in New York was found to have mice and insects. On two prior inspections, there were a high number of critical violations that required inspectors to come back for follow-ups.
So it’s no surprise Sara Barron dishes on her stint waiting tables at a New York eatery she nicknames "Hell," run by a celebrity chef she dubs "Luigi." Of all the celebs who routinely dine at Hell, says Barron, one - nicknamed "[Bleep] Waffle," after the time he demanded blueberry waffles, even though they weren't on the menu - particularly incited the wrath of the staff.
Page Six has learned that "Luigi" is Croc-wearing doughboy Mario Batali, who's been dubbed Fanta Pants because of his bright orange shorts. "Hell" is his eatery Babbo, and "[Bleep] Waffle" is Stipe.
And making overworked cooks run out to buy a pint of blueberries at 3 a.m. was far from Stipe's worst transgression. Barron tells of a time when he and a posse of 19 rolled into Babbo at 12:42 a.m., 42 minutes after the kitchen closed to the public. Stipe refused to directly communicate with Barron, instead delegating a member of his entourage to place his orders. He never said "please" or "thank you," never took his sunglasses off, and refused to go to the bathroom alone, according to the book.
By 5 a.m., says Barron, Stipe and his pals had rung up a tab of more than $2,000. The meal was comped by celeb-obsessed Batali, although Barron of course still expected a tip: "Four [hundred dollars] would be ideal - four would be 20 percent - but since they weren't being presented with a check and didn't seem mathematically inclined, figuring on two was best," she writes.
When the group extinguished its cigarettes and filed out, Barron discovered that they'd left zero: "[Bleep] Waffle had kept our staff of seven on our feet for five extra hours . . . and he did so without tipping."
Not tipping and acting like an asshole. So alternative.
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.
Restaurant inspection disclosure: Build it and they will come
Baseball is sooooooooo boring.
But I’ll use any metaphor and pop culture reference to get people to pay attention to food safety stuf.
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Even if it involves baseball.
The restaurant inspection disclosure web site in Nova Scotia – that’s in Canada – has been overwhelmed with hits since going on-line.
That’s normal. From Sydney to Scranton, the provision of restaurant inspection results is always a big hit with the public.
What’s not normal is the response from Luc Erjavec, of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association, who said it’s no biggie and that the $325,000 the province spent to create the online database could have been used to stimulate the restaurant sector.
"Maybe we could spend a half million dollars stimulating our industry. Stimulating our industry would be a better way to do it."
OOOOOhhhhhhhh. Such sexy talk.
But, as the Herald Chronicle reports this morning, millions of people went to the Agriculture Department’s website in the days following its launch in October, Leo Muise, executive director of regulation and compliance for food safety, said Wednesday.
"The first week was what we consider to be an almost unbelievable response. It seems to be going over well."
On the second day alone, about 1.5 million people checked out the food-safety inspections of restaurants and other businesses. The numbers gradually dropped over the next few months and now about 1,000 people a week use the site to look up the records for several eateries at a time.
The Chronicle Herald published a series of stories in 2006 and 2007 that exposed deficiencies in Nova Scotia’s system of inspecting restaurants. The inspection reports obtained by this newspaper noted infractions such as rodents, unsafe meat and cross-contamination of food.
At the time, the department wasn’t in favour of creating public online access to a database of inspections and cited concerns that such a practice might be bad for business at some restaurants.
Now, substitute “hockey” for “baseball” in the video clip below.
This could affect the next inspection: restaurant sickens health dept at Xmas meal
I’ve now concluded that people don’t invite me to dinner, not because I’m food safety man, not because I’m a jerk, but because I don’t like the band Journey.
Every time I write about the badness that is Journey, people insist on telling me how Journey power ballads impacted their lives in the early 1980s.
I’m also careful when people dine with me and Amy and Sorenne, cause food safety man making others barf would be, uh, awkward.
That’s probably how the owners of an unnamed southern Illinois restaurant feel after the head of the Lawrence County Health Department said she was among 42 people sickened during a buffet gathering of 72 people Dec. 15.
Phyllis Wells says the cause of the outbreak hasn't been pinpointed, but she suspects that the culprit was a norovirus that can cause stomach distress. … For now, Wells says the common denominator appears to be ham served in the salad bar.
'I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a lobotomy
Some new New York restaurant is going to offer wine and beer in baby bottles to diners.
The New York Times described the impending birth of La Cave des Fondus, an underground crib at Prince and Elizabeth Streets, as “a faithful homage to the Montmartre restaurant Le Refuge des Fondus, where Parisians enthusiastically suck down the house red and white."
The owner of the Manhatten playpen said,
“I wanted to set up my place exactly like the one in Paris. It’s such a fun place. Everybody loves drinking beer and wine from baby bottles - even my father thought it was fun - and I think New Yorkers will like it too. I checked with the health department and as long as we put the bottles in the dishwasher they have no problem with it.”
Shouldn’t these geniuses be figuring out a way to deliver beer and wine through the breast? Everyone knows breastfeeding is best for babies.
'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.
If you bag a deer, don't slaughter it in a restaurant kitchen
The manager of Stromboli Pizza in Allentown says a customer saw one of the restaurant cooks carving up a deer Tuesday. John Okumus says the venison wasn't intended for the store. He says he shot a doe during a hunt and left the carcass in the store's kitchen for pickup by a friend.
Okumus says a customer complained to the city health department after seeing a cook mistakenly butcher the deer.
The department investigated the incident but did not issue a citation.
There are reasons animals are slaughtered in slaughterhouses. See the infosheet below.
Restaurant that served contaminated food to police chief closed
MyFox Austin reports that a Central Texas restaurant has closed its kitchen for good. The decision was made after two cooks there were arrested for serving tainted food to the Burnet Police Chief. Last month, Jaime Perez,23, was arrested on a felony charge of contaminating food.
Police say he and another cook, James Ledesma, rubbed two hamburger buns in inappropriate areas, then spit in the burger and served it to police chief Paul Nelson.
A video report is available at:
http://www.myfoxaustin.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=7823308&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=3.1.1
E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks close 4 Ontario restaurants
At least one media outlet is reporting this morning that outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 in southern Ontario have been linked by DNA fingerprinting.
But I'd like to see that confirmed elsewhere.
Dr. Robin Williams, medical officer of Health for Niagara Region, said,
"We are trying to track through the supply and the source of the foods ... we're not just looking at the restaurants (involved) we're also looking at the cross-link between distributors.”
So far 208 food samples have been taken from those restaurants for analysis
The Little Red Rooster in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., was closed last Friday to let Niagara Region Public Health officials investigate potential sources of contamination. On Tuesday, M.T. Bellies in nearby Welland, Ont., was closed. The number of sick related to these two eateries has climbed to 31, with nine confirmed.
Thursday afternoon, Johnathan's Family Restaurant of Burlington, Ontario, after the Halton Region Health Department linked several new cases of E. coli O157:H7 to the '50s-style diner.
Owner Greg Tasoulis told the Toronto Star yesterday he had no option.
"A health department representative came and said `I want you to close the restaurant down.' … How do they know it doesn't come from the lettuce I got from our supplier. What if it's not us? The cost is tremendous to us ... over 5,000 people come through here in a week.”
An outbreak at a Harvey's fast-food restaurant in the central Ontario city of North Bay has led to 237 cases of E. coli O157:H7, of which 46 are laboratory confirmed. At this time there is no link between the southern Ontario outbreak and the North Bay outbreak.
Sydney Pizza Hut fails third cockroach inspection by the Australian name-and-shame squad
Think a few small bugs won’t hurt you? Think again. Cockroaches are one of the most commonly noted pest insects. They can cause chaos in the food safety standards of a restaurant because they transport harmful microbes on their body surfaces and through their droppings. Cockroaches are also found to be a common allergen for humans.
Last week, after two previous warnings about cockroaches in the kitchen, food safety inspectors returned to a Sydney, Australia Pizza Hut only to discover a cockroach in the food preparation area of the kitchen.
The store was issued with a $650 fine for not taking steps to eradicate the pests, and a second fine for not having warm running water in the kitchen for staff to wash their hands...The Pizza Hut was one of 22 premises the Food Authority fined in its blitz in recent days, in which it issued a total of 27 fines.
They will join more than 175 outlets on the authority's website, launched last year to "name and shame" businesses that do not comply with NSW hygiene laws.
The best way to deal with cockroaches is to prevent them before they become present. Keep kitchen surfaces clean and store food off the ground. However, if a restaurant already suffers from cockroaches, the problem should be eliminated and the reason behind the infestation should also be addressed. There are various chemicals and traps available for cockroaches, some more traditional than others.
For more information about cockroach infestations, visit: http://www.cdc.gov/nasd/docs/d001201-d001300/d001251/d001251.html
You can also view an FSN infosheet about cockroaches at http://bp3.blogger.com/_Pzk3AzZPULs/R1cP6_KHaiI/AAAAAAAAAFA/MwcjU8l0_y0/s1600-h/iFSN-infosheet-12-5-07.jpg
Another E. coli outbreak in Ontario
Two confirmed and two suspected cases of E. coli have been linked to the Little Red Rooster restaurant in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
The Niagara Region Public Health department, in Ontario, Canada, says the owners of the Little Red Rooster voluntarily closed as of Friday for the safety of their clients and the general public. The owners have been co-operative with Public Health staff over the course of this investigation, and have provided full access for food sampling and a general inspection
If anyone has been suffering from bloody diarrhea and severe abdominal pain, with or without fever, between the dates of Saturday, October 11, and this past Friday you are asked to contact Niagara Region Public Health at 905-688-8248, or 1-888-505-6074, ext. 7330 (during business hours) or 905-984-3690 (evenings and weekends).
Secret Suppers
USA Today yesterday reported that the underground restaurant scene is growing. Jenn Garbee, who has just written Secret Suppers: Rogue Chefs & Underground Restaurants in Warehouses, Townhouses, Open Fields & Everywhere in Between (Sasquatch Books,$18.95) estimates there are at least 100 such places nationwide, with new ones opening all the time.
Q: In a nutshell, what are underground restaurants? Are they essentially dinner parties that strangers pay to attend?
A: They're something in between a dinner party and a supper club (in which members share the cost of dinners at rotating houses). The difference is the members aren't the same every time. There's a donation, but sometimes that doesn't cover anything but expenses. So it's sort of a paid dinner party — or like going to a restaurant where you don't know who's sitting next to you.
Q: Since they're generally skirting tax and licensing regulations, most operate under the radar. How did you find them?
A: Most are Internet-driven, so I just Googled "underground restaurants"and "secret supper clubs." You can ask chefs, food folks or at farmers markets, and check out food blogs. I wanted to include different types in the book in terms of size and location and the reason the chef is doing it.
'You made my mum eat poo;' legal action planned against Australian pub
So this family goes to a pub to watch some footy. Let’s call them Mr. And Mrs. Whyte, because that’s their names.
The Whytes didn’t like the service, thought the food expensive, and complained.
Never complain about restaurant food and then get more food, especially if it’s free. Didn’t anyone watch that movie, Waiting, featuring Mr. Scarlett Johansson, Ryan Reynolds?
As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Whytes and their three sons were served complimentary gelato dessert by Coogee Bay Hotel staff three weeks ago after complaining about food prices, facilities and staff attitude.
Mrs Whyte said,
"There were four scoops including vanilla, chocolate and hazelnut. At the bottom, there appeared to be chocolate. Greedily, I went for it ahead of the kids. Thank heavens I did. The stench, the taste … I spat the food into a napkin and immediately I was sick.
"There was no doubting what it was. The whole family became hysterical. My poor son screamed at one of their staff: 'You made my mum eat poo."' The family complained to Waverley police.
The story says that the family took a sample of the gelato and had it tested at the National Measurement Institute. A report from the institute found: "The sample has an offensive odour and physical properties similar to human excreta."
In a letter to the family, hotel general manager Tony Williams said,
"If the incident did happen, as claimed, then it may well have been an act of industrial sabotage — with the hotel as a victim alongside your family."
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But yesterday Mr Williams said the case was now a legal issue that would be "vigorously defended".
"We are aware of the allegation and are treating it as extremely suspicious. Mr and Mrs Whyte have made a demand for up to $1 million from The Coogee Bay Hotel … We categorically stand behind the high quality of our food and the exemplary hygiene standards set in the new brassiere kitchen."
Latvia's hospital-themed restaurant
Amy and I just got back from another prenatal visit with the doc. She says everything is great, and we’ve checked out the facilities at the local hospital – doc says upon admittance, make sure to ask for one of the rooms with the hot tub.
The dining facilities aren’t quite so elaborate, although you can order from a menu and have it delivered within 30 minutes. And while I’m still hot on the idea of a Safe Food Café for dining and research, I won’t be pushing for a hospital-themed restaurant anytime soon. But that is exactly what opened in Riga, Latvia, where guests can dine on consulting beds, while being waited upon by nurses.
Toronto shuts restaurant after rat sighting
The rats must have seen the Stephen Colbert bear-visiting-Subway bit cause they showed up for a video performance in a Toronto Chinatown restaurant last night.
A passerby originally posted a photo of the rat-in-the-restaurant to blogto.com. Video footage soon followed.
The Toronto Star reports,
Inspectors visited Happy Seven, a Chinese restaurant on Spadina Ave. known for late-night munchies, yesterday after seeing the video, but did not find any signs of vermin.
The restaurant passed an inspection on Oct. 2, and public records show it was inspected an average three times per year.
In February, someone photographed a rat in the window of the Dumpling House, about a block south of Happy Seven. The restaurant was forced to close while it disinfected the premises and called a pest control company. Between clean-up expenses and the temporary closure, the restaurant lost about $10,000, a manager said at the time. It has since re-opened.
Bear visits Subway restaurant in Canada; Stephen Colbert terrified
Tap-dancing rats in restaurants seems so yesterday after a black bear visited a Subway restaurant during the early morning of Sept. 15, 2008, in the north coast town of Kitimat, British Columbia.
Rebecca Branton, who was in the back, told CBC News,
"I was just back there making soup … but I saw the door open and it was a bear. I grabbed my cellphone and ran to the back and locked myself in the bathroom and called my parents.”
The young bear's every move was captured by nine video cameras in the shop, including how it managed to grab the handle of the front door and pull it open.
See for yourself as part of The Colbert Report the other night. The bear bit starts at about 2:30. The zombie piece is hilarious, though, so watch through to the end.
No word on whether a health inspector was called to give the OK on potentially contaminated ingredients.
Casey Jacob, guest barfblogger: Swiss restaurant barred from serving human breast milk
The Swiss restaurant hailed as the inspiration for PETA’s plea to Ben and Jerry’s to replace the cow’s milk in their ice cream with human breast milk is facing legal action if it continues with its plan to use breast milk purchased from new mothers in its soups and sauces. .jpg)
The public was startled by Hans Loucher’s newspaper advertisements to new mothers to purchase their excess breast milk for $14.50/liter (or about $3.50 per 8oz. baby bottle) for use in his restaurant, the Storchen, whose name ironically refers to a stork in English.
“The mother’s milk is the most natural thing in the world – how can anyone be against it?” Mr. Loucher asked the Times Online. “I served the meals to my friends without telling them about the new ingredient and the feedback was excellent.”
Of course, being a “natural” food does not make it free of disease-causing microorganisms. It would be very difficult to regulate how the milk was handled before purchase by the restaurateur, and it is not likely he possesses the equipment necessary to pasteurize it before use.
Last week, as reported by the Times Online, the canton’s food regulatory body ruled that Mr. Locher would not be able to store the human milk properly nor guarantee that it was fresh and safe for consumption, since the product was not a registered or regulated food. Along with the Association of Swiss Milk Producers, Zurich’s food regulator has threatened lawsuits against Mr. Locher and anyone who provides human milk for his cause.
Australian sushi business fined over rats
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Chief Industrial Magistrates Court fined Sushi World's Camperdown premises more than $60,000 after it heard the business was closed by the New South Wales Food Authority after an inspection in November 2006 revealed it was a "risk to public health.”
Inspectors who toured the premises found rat faeces scattered over the floor, on equipment and in food-processing areas. Two 12.5-kilogram bags of flour had been "gnawed open by rodents" and one of the creatures was seen in the food storage area, the court heard.
The NSW Chief Industrial Magistrate, George Miller, said Sushi World's failure to adhere to parts of the food standards code indicated "serious shortfalls in basic food handling", and the company's continued breaches from November 2006 to May 2007 suggested a "disturbing willingness to run a food business without regard for basic hygiene standards".
During the hearing its director, Suk Joon Song, said trade decreased by 50 per cent due to negative publicity after the charges had been made public.
Sushi World no longer operates from the Camperdown premises but has opened a factory in Meadowbank, which has been approved by the NSW Food Authority.
It's summertime and dirty dog is on the menu in Seoul
From July 15 to 18, 2008 Seoul City has conducted a four-day intensive inspection on the restaurants selling dog meat.
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The inspection by the city was done for the first time since 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics when most dog meat restaurants in the capital were forced to close or to move out of the city.The spokesperson of the Seoul city, however, said that the control over the dog meat restaurant is far from approval of dog meat.
Koreans are known to enjoy dog meats particularly during the sweltering summer days. In Seoul area alone there are some 6,000 restaurants selling dog meat.
Annually 2 million dogs are butchered for the human consumption in South Korea.
Casey Jacob, guest barfblogger: The south central Kansas omnivore's dilemma
We thought we might try Acapulco Restaurant, a Mexican franchise in town. That is, until I read on FSnet that the restaurant had just been named as the source of a 19-person salmonella outbreak. My new hubby was suddenly not too keen on going.I, however, reasoned that after gaining some bad press and losing a bit of business, the restaurant’s management would be preaching food safety harder than they ever had before. The chances of an outbreak due to kitchen hygiene issues likely decreased dramatically.
In August 2007, Donna Garren, vice-president of health and safety regulatory affairs for the National Restaurant Association trade group, said outbreaks were leading restaurant chains to “[spend] additional resources outside of the typical food safety domain.”
Donna also admits, however, “There are costs associated with not knowing your suppliers.” If ingredients aren’t sourced from safe suppliers, even that assumedly sparkling-clean kitchen is no guarantee I’ll be served safe food.
Her quote was included in an article that claimed it was statistically safer to eat at fast-food chain restaurants than to cook for yourself at home.
While the title of Biggest Source of Foodborne Illness – home, restaurant, elsewhere -- is still hard to pin down, it can be safely said that both chain restaurants and the household kitchen are still in the running. So who knows where I’ll have dinner tonight… or if I’ll make it out without barfing.
As one Acapulco Restaurant patron confessed, “You compare all the bad to the good, sometimes it's worth the risks.”
Casey Jacob is the married version of former barfblogger Casey Wilkinson, and continues to work with her Kansas friends.
Fish of the day sauce a killer
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The sauce, which was served with the fish of the day at Tables restaurant in Pymble on January 12, 2007, had 9.8 million colony-producing units of Bacillus cereus per gram.Ms Culver said the sauce was made at 3pm the day before, on January 11, and refrigerated. It was taken out of the refrigerator on January 12 but not discarded after four hours of use. Four hours is the recommended amount of time for the sauce to be used after being refrigerated, Ms Culver said.
Instead of being thrown out, it was placed in a coolroom so that it could be used for serving meals.
Ms Culver said the container for the sauce had no label showing when it was made or when it should be discarded.
Tips for buying fresh produce: Ask, hope, pray
The restaurant was voluntarily closed Thursday, cleaned Saturday under the supervision of health department specialists, and plans to reopen Monday.
Marion restaurant owner Bob Gaddy said he had not heard about the salmonella problems. He and his brother, Mack, have run Harvest Drive-In for 35 years. Like O'Dear, Gaddy makes a point of buying tomatoes and produce from somewhere he thinks is safe, but said it's tough to know.
"You ask. But you also hope and pray.”
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Restaurant criticized for keeping fish in a urinal
The restaurant says the fish are not in any danger and that the water is running and staff change the water at least twice a day and add oxygen into the water much like a regular fish tank.The restaurant's owner adds the fish are just an attraction and not used in dishes.
Guests say they're surprised to see the fish swimming in the trough which has a sign saying, "Please urinate here" above it.
Florida restaurant fined for keeping bread in bathroom
Employees at the Checkers store on South French Avenue at West 15th Street apparently decided it was okay to store buns for their hamburgers inside a not-so-clean men's room.
Tuesday, it appeared they had changed the policy, but not before racking up a dozen health code violations.
Bosnia diner linked to Salmonella outbreak
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City authorities ordered the closure of the diner and investigated its food and facilities.Craig Hedberg, guest barfblogger: The most dangerous states for eating out-not!
The five most dangerous states for eating out, according to this analysis, were Florida, California, Minnesota, Ohio, and New York. Florida and California were cited as having the most dangerous restaurants for the third year in a row. This is wrong, wrong, wrong.Florida, California, and New York are three of the four largest states in the nation. Ohio ranks 7th. More people mean more restaurants. More restaurants mean more outbreaks in restaurants. It really is that simple.
If you turn the number of outbreaks into a rate that compares outbreaks per million population, or outbreaks per 1,000 eating and drinking establishments (see table below) the rankings change.
As you can plainly see from this table, Minnesota is twice as dangerous for eating out as any of the other states, right? Wrong again.
Minnesota has the highest rate of reported outbreaks because it has the most aggressive and effective public health surveillance system for foodborne illnesses. This is an example of the tree falling in the woods problem. Falling trees generate sound waves, but if no one is there to hear them, they don’t generate any sound. In Minnesota, we may not actually have more falling trees, but we’re out there listening for them.
One important source for hearing about outbreaks in restaurants is from the restaurants themselves. Because many environmental health specialists in Minnesota view themselves as teachers rather than enforcers, they take the time to get to know the restaurant operators and listen to their problems. This, in turn, fosters a relationship of trust where restaurant operators actually report illness complaints to the local health department. Outbreaks are identified, problems are corrected, and we all learn a little bit more about the constantly changing challenges of making food safe.
In this ranking, being at the top of the list is a good thing.
--
Craig Hedberg is a foodborne disease epidemiologist and Associate Professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.
The most dangerous U.S. states for eating out?
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1. Florida 74 outbreaks2. California 69 outbreaks
3. Minnesota 55 outbreaks
4. Ohio 54 outbreaks
5. New York 50 outbreaks
Across the country, restaurants were responsible for at least 605 outbreaks of food poisoning in 2006, compared to 532 outbreaks in 2005.
I'm not sure what the numbers actually mean. Fodborne illness is notoriously underreported, and some state and local health departments are better than others in following up and tracking down where and how people get sick.
Further, the numbers are simply counts, and do not account for the number of restaurants in a state, or even better, the number of meals consumed at a restaurant in a state in a year. What about food service? Are those meals included or not?
Fun with lists.
From Toronto to Taiwan, rats in restaurants a problem
The man, surnamed Chai, was cited as saying that he and his foreign guest hadn't finished dinning yet on Feb. 2, when a small rat scrambled quickly from the shopping mall into Minhan 101, and then towards the kitchen, adding, "That was disgusting. The Taipei 101 is a national landmark visited by numerous foreigners."
Wang Yen-chi, spokesperson for Taipei 101, said that rat-eradication campaigns on the fourth floor will be increased, up from two disinfections per moths.
Health department sued over inspection
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poor inspection. Owners of Mo's Restaurant in Monticello, Indiana, claim that following inspections of their restaurant, health department employees "negligently and/or intentionally prepar[ed] a false and defamatory Food Inspection Report" on three different occasions. A story in the town's Herald-Journal says, "The lawsuit seeks a judgment against the defendants in an amount sufficient to compensate Drake and Liebner for their losses, including permanent and temporary damage, loss of value, loss of profits, loss of use, costs of repair and mental and emotional stress, as well as "such further relief as the court deems appropriate."
What temperature would you like your lamb chops?
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I immediately jumped in, blowing my food safety cover, and asked, "You actually have thermometers back in the kitchen?"
She said, "Yes."
I've been a food safety geek for coming up on 15 years. No one has ever asked me what temperature I wanted my food.
I couldn't believe it.
The occasion was Angelique's birthday, so Amy and I, along with Bob, decided to take our friend to the newest Manhattan (Kansas) eatery, della Voce.
When ordering, the waitress told us the meat on the menu was hormone and antibiotic free. Uh-oh, I thought, another over-priced food porn joint. Not interested.
But, the food was good and the atmosphere was great for a leisurely 2.5 hour meal. Stick it in.
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We haven't had a problem for 22 years so why train staff?
Environmental health officers visited, and found cooked duck stored in cardboard boxes where raw poultry had been, dirty chopping boards and no cleaning or drying equipment for the hand basin near the staff toilets.Directors of the Cantonese restaurant pleaded guilty to eight offences under food hygiene laws at Tameside magistrates' court Dec. 28/07, and were fined £14,000.
A major shareholder was cited as saying he didn't ensure staff had sufficient hygiene training because he had been trading 22 years without a problem.
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."
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.
Repeat restaurant offenders? Open by breakfast
The news team ended up at the Jade Dragon in Clarksville,
one of the worst offenders around when it comes to dirty kitchens; in the last two years, the Jade Dragon has repeatedly failed its surprise inspections, getting scores as low as a 58, 52, even a 47.
The manager told us, "Everything's clean."
The TV crew poked around and discovered what appeared to be many of the same violations the joint had been cited for previously.
Eventually the manager of the Jade Dragon asked, while the cameras rolled,
"Can we get everything stopped? I don't want to be on TV at all."
Hugh Atkins with the state Health Department was quoted as saying,
"We don't allow an unsafe restaurant to remain open," and that if a restaurant is open, it's safe.
Ronnie Hart with the Tennessee Restaurant Association said,
"The bottom line is fix the problem. You can't put a band-aid on it. Fix the problem," adding that his group has little patient for repeat offenders and is now pushing for mandatory food safety training.
We agree.
Fancy food doesn't mean safe food
Serendipity 3, a famous New York City restaurant which last week unveiled what it called the most expensive dessert in the world, has been shut down by the city Department of Health after a second failed health inspection Wednesday night.Inspectors found the restaurant
"crawling with cockroaches, mice and flies. Inspectors spotted a live mouse and mouse droppings in many areas of the restaurant."
One customer was quoted as saying,
"I am in shock. You know a friend of mine from Washington, D.C. asked me to come by to Serendipity especially to pick some coffee up. So I get here, it's chain and everything and they found a hundred roaches in there."
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.
Restaurant inspection -- by Larry the Cable Guy
Despite being universally panned by critics and avoided by moviegoers, I finally saw Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector while editing news the other night. Sure it's terrible and deserves its #87 ranking in IMDb's Bottom 100, but it has some food safety moments.When Larry's partner, Amy Butlin, asks,
"How did you become a health inspector? I mean working for the government, it sounds so exciting?"
Larry responds:
"Well, I gotta tell ya, Keepin people from blowin' chunks and crappin' on themselves is pretty much all I've ever been good at. I mean, no one really knows the responsibility I carry around."
Favorite line? After ingesting some tainted food, Larry proclaims:
"My stomach ain't felt this bad since I got the fish sticks out of the vending machine at the Phillips 66."
Dairy Queen has repeat violations
Healthinspections.com is reporting that a Dairy Queen in Daytona Beach was fined $900 for repeated problems such as untrained employees handling food and foods held at dangerous temperatures.Based on a review of thousands of health inspections in 12 cities, Dairy Queen has one of the worst records in the fast food industry, often with critical violations that have not been corrected since the last inspection. The chain has one of the worst records in fast food for repeating the same health code violation time and again.
Employee hygiene is the number one problem at DQ – accounting for 22% of the chain's violations. Hygiene includes everything from workers not washing their hands to employees found eating and drinking in the kitchen.
Near Denver, for example, an inspector watched an employee "wipe nose, take money," and continue to prepare food without washing.
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.
Intervention: it's not just a bad TV show, it's a new type of restaurant inspection enforcement
Gee's Garden Bistro, 1145 N. Alvernon Way, Tuscon, Arizona, failed an unannounced restaurant inspection July 17. And a re-inspection July 27; and Aug. 8 and Aug. 21.So the Pima County Health Department tried a new strategy - intervention.
Sharon Browning, director of Pima County's Consumer Health and Food Safety unit, told the Tucson Citizen that Gee's is the first restaurant to go through the county's intervention program, devised in 2002, stating,
"It's not like a last resort, but it's close. We're trying to allow these people to stay open while they make significant changes, and it's a tool that's been in our toolbox, but one we'd never used until now."
The intervention period will include unannounced inspections at irregular intervals through January, at which point the restaurant could regain its regular license or have it revoked.
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.
Fancy restaurant didn't know how to cool food; three sickened
In one of the lamest food safety excuses ever tabled, defence lawyer Adrian Gundelach told the Brisbane Magistrates Court yesterday -- with a straight face -- that Harem Restaurant, routinely left dishes out to cool at room temperature for eight hours, stating,"It was something that my clients couldn't have foreseen. They'd been following a practice that they've been following since the day the restaurant opened."
That practice led to three people barfing up Clostridium perfringens after dining at the upscale Brisbane eatery in July. An additional 16 people at the function also reported symptoms, but were not confirmed after failing to return health sample kits to Queensland Health.
The Harem restaurant in Brisbane, Australia, is listed in the Best Restaurants Guide of Australia as follows:
"Be an Ottoman prince for the evening: sit on sumptuous cushions shrouded by curtains, feast on finger food and enjoy a night of belly-shaking. There’s no confusion as to what type of restaurant Harem is; the dining room is a riot of handmade rugs, multi-coloured tablecloths, brass lamps and cushions, all imported from Turkey, and the carpeted floorspace is patrolled by fez-hatted wait staff."
The judge wasn't amused and fined the restaurant $20,000.
The restaurant has since changed its cooling techniques.
Pay more attention to food safety basics and less food pornography.
Casey Wilkinson, guest barfblogger: Poop on your shoes...
I clicked on the headline and waited for the story to appear. I read in horror as each word confirmed my deepest fears: the entire story was absolutely true.
Apparently the worker at a Great China Buffet restaurant was using a very innovative technique to press garlic cloves: stomping them with his boots in a back alley. A passerby had noted him there with a horror similar to my own and snapped a photo.
The Rockland County Health Department was notified and quickly came for an inspection. The worker was fired for his act, and the restaurant will be re-inspected soon.
I wish I could rest easy now, but I’m afraid there may be more out there just like him: full of ignorance and disregard for the safety of our food.
Don’t eat poop, people: Wash your hands. And don’t stomp the garlic.
It's too hot for hell to have frozen over but ...
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Seven years after a newspaper series focused attention on restaurant inspection in Toronto, the local paper in the sleepy borough of Guelph, Ontario, 40 miles down the road, has seen fit to run a story about four local restaurants getting fined for food safety infractions.It's the first local coverage I can recall. And I lived there a long time.
In 2004 I had a student call the local health unit and ask for inspection information about a few Guelph restaurants. She was told to file a written request with the Board of Health and await a response in the mail; 4-6 weeks.
So while seemingly every jurisdiction in Canada and the U.S. was figuring out the best way to make restaurant inspection information public and meaningful -- even Jessica Simpson, exactly as pictured, left, gets it -- the city of Guelph, Canada's self-proclaimed food safety center, did what it does best -- be a bureaucrat.
What's with all the goats in restaurants?
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On this video, councilman Dennis Mobley of New Franklin, Ohio, just south of Akron, runs from a TV reporter who wants to ask questions about the councilman's dirty restaurant.Healthinspections.com reports that Mobley owns a place called Your Pizza, a popular spot in the town of 14,000 that has been cited for a lot of serious health code violations, including a goat in the pizzeria.
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.
Waiter, there's a ...
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel offers these tips for safe dining out:Pick restaurants where the bathrooms have soap, toilet paper and paper towels.
Insects, such as roaches, and rodents should not be inside a restaurant.
Food should be thoroughly cooked, especially chicken and ground beef.
If you become ill after eating in a restaurant, seek medical attention and call your county health department. Save suspect restaurant food by freezing it in a clean container with a lid.
And the more information about restaurant inspections, the better.
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.
Restaurant tip: Don't scratch your butt and then prepare salad
Rebecca J. Gray Causey, a regional food safety and defense coordinator for the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control could be my new personal hero.The Myrtle Beach Sun News reported on restaurant inspection today and cited Causey as doing a food inspection, when the salad bar worker stopped chopping lettuce, commenced scratching his bottom and then returned to chopping lettuce.
Causey found the eatery's manager and told him,
"Let's have a talk with Stinky Hands. He needs to know that if he has an itchy butt, he doesn't scratch it on the [salad bar] line."
Causey, shut down the salad bar 30 minutes before the eatery's opening time. All the food on the bar had to be thrown away.
On another occasion, Causey saw Stinky Hands' brother popping pimples on his chest while he was grilling meat.
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.
Doggy dining
Watching dogs in restaurants, stores and trains as we tour France has made us wonder if indeed 60 million Frenchmen can't be wrong.
Yet the other night during dinner at a patio table next to us, a couple sat with their ‘tween son and a tiny doggy that they passed from person to person until the food came. The Yorkie was then expected to sit calmly under a chair while his family ate. Within minutes he started yelping when a large stray wandered by looking for handouts. Most of the diners good-naturedly ignored the dog, but our neighbors, clear dog lovers, juggled patting the big beast, feeding table scraps to their own puppy, keeping the two from scuffling (surely the tiny dog would win), and finishing their dinners. The management softly discouraged feeding scraps to the stray, but there was no real effort made to dissuade him from joining the families.
No one seemed bothered.
But poop happens. Having to engage in athletic contortions to avoid dog poop in the narrow streets of Nîmes, Marseilles or Toulouse makes us recognize that dogs without yards, grass-lined sidewalks, and pooper-scoopers, quickly make an otherwise lovely city unsanitary. One pioneering doggy-friendly restaurant in St. Petersburg, Florida discovered this when a canine guest had diarrhea during peak hours. The owner said, "Ultimately, we're here to serve people, not dogs," and reverted to the no-dogs-allowed camp.
As lawmakers in Oregon, Missouri, Washington, Florida, Chicago, Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, New York City and San Diego have discovered, there are reasons why dogs and their companions should -- and should not -- be allowed to “have a brewski together, a hot dog together or whatever they want” as former governor Jeb Bush worded it a year ago in enacting Florida's legislation.
Florida appears to have considered the risks -- at least on paper. And although doggy dining may be convenient for a client, for the restaurant owner it’s not as simple.
Under the law, Florida cities are able to enact an ordinance allowing restaurants to apply for permission to open their patio doors to dogs, under the following conditions:
• food service employees must not touch, pet or handle dogs while serving food or beverages;
• food service employees must wash their hands promptly after touching, petting or handling dogs;
• patrons must be advised to wash their hands before eating and the restaurant must provide waterless hand sanitizer at each table;
• dogs must not come into contact with serving dishes, utensils and tableware or other items involved in food service (this is the only applicable law in France);
• dogs will not be allowed on chairs, tables or other furnishings.
• accidents involving dog waste must be cleaned immediately and the area must be sanitized;
• cats and other pets are not covered by the law; and,
• local governments can issue a fee to the restaurants for permit.
While the benefits for a dog-loving nation may seem apparent, there are any number of risks: tripping, biting, dog fights, barking, allergies, and the transfer of dangerous microorganisms such as E. coli, salmonella and cryptosporidium, among others. If it's difficult to get employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom, what about after touching a dog? And do public health inspectors, who already investigate both dog bites and restaurants in many cities, really need more of both without extra help?
The transfer of pathogens from dogs to humans (and vice-versa) is well-documented -- but not on restaurant patios. The outbreaks of foodborne illness just aren't there. A pre-rehab Britney Spears changing her baby's diaper on a restaurant table likely poses a greater risk.
As pet owners, we would likely choose to frequent restaurants that allow our (exceedingly well-behaved) dogs on the terrace, as we have done in the past.
If we were restaurant owners, we would want to know we weren’t serving poop, whether it came with the bags of spinach, was ground up in the beef that wasn’t sufficiently cooked, or transmitted on our patio by a pet. Further, we'd want to know the dog -- and more importantly the owner -- before they came anywhere near our patio.
The evidence suggests that dogs can and should be allowed on restaurant patios -- but only at the discretion of restaurant staff and only if staff and owners follow the Florida protocol.
Amy Hubbell and Douglas Powell are with the International Food Safety Network at Kansas State University.
