Tag Archives: florida

Florida not inspecting food at hospitals, nursing homes

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In a few weeks we’ll be leaving for a month of seaside (Gulf-side) writing in Florida.

As food safety dude and axman Roy Costa has pointed out, I sure hope I don’t end up in a Florida hospital, because no one is doing food inspections.

The Department of Health told Associated Press yesterday it’s working with other agencies to figure out who will handle inspections at the state’s 286 hospitals and 671 nursing homes. Meanwhile, the Department of Children & Families is temporarily taking over the inspection of day-care centers, which were also part of the cuts.

The health department had been inspecting facilities four times a year until Gov. Charlie Crist signed a bill (HB 5311) stopping them. Experts say people at these facilities are the most vulnerable for foodborne illnesses.

DCF Secretary George Sheldon said his agency decided to fill the gap at day cares and will temporarily oversee inspections because “it was the right thing to do.”

DCF employees already inspect day-care facilities for safety issues. Sheldon said the Legislature was trying to consolidate inspections to prevent multiple state agencies from visiting the same facilities to inspect different standards.

The health department inspected more than 15,000 day-care centers last year, finding nearly 12,000 violations, including food from unsafe sources, poor hygiene and contaminated equipment.

I don’t really care who inspects as long as there is accountability in the system through — at a minimum — public availability of results and mandatory training for anyone who handles and prepares food.
 

Cause of Florida woman’s near-fatal food illness a mystery; exposes failures in system

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The Palm Beach Post reports this morning that Amber Dycus, 38, of Loxahatchee, Florida, went to the hospital after four days of illness. The doctors told her she was in acute kidney failure, hours from death. She endured six days of intensive care, multiple blood transfusions and, so far, 196 bags of plasma.

There are more treatments to come, and no signs yet that her kidney function is approaching normal. She feels lucky to be alive, but also very afraid – afraid of eating out, afraid of catching germs, afraid of never getting better.

Dycus desperately wants to know what did this to her. Her lawyer, Craig Goldenfarb, thinks the public ought to feel the same way.

A health department inquiry has resulted in the brief closure of a Royal Palm Beach restaurant where Dycus often ate. Inspectors found roaches, improper food temperatures, slime in the freezer and a dishwasher with almost no sanitizer in it. After a thorough cleaning and a tuneup on the dishwasher, the restaurant, Hilary & Sons, has reopened.

But was it really the source of her illness? A series of missed opportunities, miscommunications, delays, and no small measure of scientific uncertainty means there may never be a conclusive answer.

At Palms West last month, Dycus was diagnosed with hemolytic-uremic syndrome. It’s an often fatal condition that happens when toxins cause red blood cells to shear apart and clog capillaries, shutting down the kidneys and leading to a buildup of waste in the blood.

It’s associated with outbreaks of dangerous E.coli O157 food poisoning.

Normally, when E.coli O157 is suspected, the health department is notified immediately, so that a public health investigation can be launched.

Dycus said her doctors told her she must have eaten contaminated beef. She’s grateful to them, and the nurses at Palms West, whom she says saved her life. But one thing they did not do was notify health authorities. A spokeswoman for Palms West said she could not comment.

It wasn’t until Dycus contacted a lawyer, and her lawyer called the media, that a health inquiry began. By then, a month had passed, the foods Dycus had eaten had long since disappeared, and the ability to tell exactly what sickened her had become nearly impossible to discern.

Courtesy Nailsea Court

A poem for public health

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I’m surprised whenever an outbreak of foodborne illness is picked up in the U.S., except the most egregious violations of sanitation and safety, where large numbers of people are sickened.

Those investigations with people scattered across states, like the current E. coli O145 outbreak that has sickened over 50, are a testament to the skill, dedication of training of public and environmental health types.

Yet across the U.S., public health is taking budgetary hits as the trickle down of housing and financial collapse makes its way to the local level — states and counties are looking everywhere to balance the books.

A public health type penned and posted the following poem at http://randomleaves.blogspot.com/.

FIRST THEY VOTED to eliminate child care inspections
And I didn’t speak up because I didn’t have children

THEN THEY VOTED to stop inspecting food service establishments
And I didn’t speak up because another agency did those inspections

THEN THEY VOTED to get rid of nursing home and hospital inspectors
And I didn’t speak up because I worked in the OSTDS program

THEN THEY VOTED to abolish Environmental Health
And there was no one left to speak up
 

Costa strikes: Orlando s Action 9 investigates dirty dining

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WFTV — Action 9 in Orlando, Florida – goes behind the kitchen doors of local restaurants, where state inspectors kept finding conditions that could make somebody sick. Have these restaurants cleaned up their act?

I love the erstwhile drama of local news.

Bugs crawling on dish towels; raw fish on the floor; cooked food at risky temperatures. Those are some of the conditions Action 9 uncovered at local restaurants that had routinely failed state inspections.

Retired state restaurant inspector Roy Costa (right, exactly as whown) joined Action 9’s Todd Ulrich inside the kitchen at Dim Sum Feast near Orlando.

Just three months ago, the state shut Dim Sum Feast down temporarily after an inspector found raw waste water on the floor and employees tracked it through the kitchen.

While Action 9 saw improved conditions, the inspector found big problems remain. He said shrimp thawing in stagnant water and frozen chicken stacked on racks could breed bacteria.

In the cooler was uncovered, uncooked meat that was stored over ready-to-eat food and that leads to cross contamination. Costa spotted undiluted bleach in a bottle to spray counters. He called that extremely risky.

“[He] sprays it on a food contact service area and prepares something and soaks it and then serves it to somebody,” Costa explained.

New China Buffet is a restaurant that flunked seven state inspections in two years and it would have failed Action 9’s test again.

Managers at New China Buffet and Dim Sum told Action 9 they’ve improved and their kitchens are safe.