548 restaurants get Kent Co. Michigan food safety awards

Posted on by

Who knew there were over 500 restaurants in the Grand Rapids, MI area? I’m not sure this qualifies as unique or special but about one third – 548 of the 1700 county – got a special award for food safety.

“It’s pretty elite company, if you will,” Kent County Health Department Supervising Sanitarian Max Bjorkman said of the award recipients. “Of the 1,700 restaurants that are eligible for the award, less than one third get it.”kent-county

For a restaurant to get the award, it had to meet criteria including no repeat violations for the year, no enforcement action taken against it and no complaints confirmed by the health department and determined to be a public health rise, among other things.

Yeah, I’m not sure how elite it is to be one of the 548 places.

This entry was posted in Listeria and tagged by Ben Chapman. Bookmark the permalink.

About Ben Chapman

Dr. Ben Chapman is a professor and food safety extension specialist at North Carolina State University. As a teenager, a Saturday afternoon viewing of the classic cable movie, Outbreak, sparked his interest in pathogens and public health. With the goal of less foodborne illness, his group designs, implements, and evaluates food safety strategies, messages, and media from farm-to-fork. Through reality-based research, Chapman investigates behaviors and creates interventions aimed at amateur and professional food handlers, managers, and organizational decision-makers; the gate keepers of safe food. Ben co-hosts a biweekly podcast called Food Safety Talk and tries to further engage folks online through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and, maybe not surprisingly, Pinterest. Follow on Twitter @benjaminchapman.