Tag Archives: grade

Fancy food does not mean safe food, Sydney edition

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Sydney’s wealthiest area, Mosman, ranked among the riskiest places to eat in New South Wales according to the Food Authority’s annual report card, obtained by The Sun-Herald.

Overall, cafes, restaurants and takeaway shops in NSW received more than 2000 fines for hygiene offences over the past year.

Although NSW has established Australia’s toughest hygiene compliance regime, one-fifth of the state’s 20,000 registered food sellers continue to put the health of their customers at risk.

The NSW, shows food sellers failed more than 13,000 random inspections. That represents 26.3 per cent of the 50,005 inspections carried out in the 12 months to June 30, with some premises inspected three times or more.

More than 8000 warning letters were sent to restaurants and cafes by 153 local authorities. Improvement notices were sent to 1399 businesses and 2049 penalty notices issued.

The number of court prosecutions more than halved from 48 to 22 in 2009-10.

There are now nearly 1800 businesses on the state government’s ”name and shame” list.

Mosman – where the average annual income is $131,606 – ranks among the poorest for food hygiene.

Primary Industries Minister Steve Whan said he was pleased that fewer businesses had required re-inspection in the past year. The purpose of the report was ”so we can be alerted to where the problems lie and fix them’.’

A ”scores-on-doors” scheme, revealed by The Sun-Herald in April, is being trialled in 20 council areas until Christmas. Participating restaurants display a simple A, B or C rating. It is hoped the prospect of a poor rating will drive owners to maintain high standards of cleanliness.

No health scores on window cards, but a better website for San Francisco diners

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Mission Local reports members of the San Francisco Health Commission unanimously approved a resolution yesterday to hire more health inspectors and make the health inspection process itself less mysterious.

Notably absent from the resolution was a recommendation that president James Illig proposed an hour before to the Community and Public Health Committee: to require food establishments to “post the most current inspection scorecard in a window or other locations visible to the public.”

Instead, the resolution included a request for bi-annual reports outlining the progress of the city’s goal to routinely inspect restaurants twice per year, another request for more comprehensive cost reports (there’s some uncertainty as to whether the fees gathered by health inspections cover the cost of running the department), an urging to fill health inspector positions that have been vacant for months and an overhaul of the Department of Public Health’s web site to allow the public easy access to current and past restaurant inspection reports.

Restaurants are already required to post their health inspection reports, said Richard Lee, the Department of Public Health’s Director of Environmental Health and Regulatory Programs. But the report is often posted in hard to find places, if at all. And there is no requirement that they post the green card accompanying the report that shows the restaurant’s most recent inspection score.
 

Brisbane restaurants fined $338,000 for breaches

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The Courier-Mail reports more than 14 Brisbane (that’s in Australia) food businesses have been prosecuted by Brisbane City Council and fined a total of $338,000 for breaching food safety and hygiene standards during the past 13 months.

Photographs taken inside some Brisbane businesses during snap inspections by council officers revealed messy work benches, cobwebs, rusty pipes, dirty utensils and dead rodents in traps.

One South Brisbane restaurant was fined $22,000 in July after it was found guilty of six breaches of the Food Act.

The findings come as council finishes inspecting the last of Brisbane’s eateries in preparation for the launch of its Eat Safe food rating program.

From November, the city’s food businesses will voluntarily place ratings from two to five stars in their windows, under the scheme first revealed by The Courier-Mail in February.

So far, 4028 businesses have been inspected in preparation for the launch.

About 2504 received a rating of three stars or more and 1524 businesses scored two stars or less.

Of those, 493 businesses received a poor rating because they did not have a nominated food safety supervisor.

Eat Safe Brisbane will award five stars for excellent compliance with the state’s Food Act and Food Safety Standards.

Getting more ‘granularity’ into San Francisco’s restaurant grades

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San Francisco is playing catch up with its California brethren and has finally decided to post closure notices on restaurants considered to be health hazards.

Mission Local reports the president of the Health Commission also promised to propose further policy changes to boost restaurant inspections and help diners more easily find a restaurant’s health score.

That don’t mean much.

Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, San Francisco’s director of occupational and environmental health, said,

“We serve the entire population of the city,” underscoring the need for information regarding health code compliance to be made publicly available.

After the meeting, Bhatia said he would advocate for more transparency within the food safety inspection program, including posting inspection scores within five feet of a restaurant’s entrance — which is the policy in cities such as Los Angeles and New York.

In 2004, Supervisor Chris Daly advocated a letter-grade system for restaurant inspections, which Los Angeles and now New York use. The system would have ranked restaurants by a series of letter grades from A to D, based on health code compliance, and would have required them to post that grade in plain view. The executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association at the time called the grades “scarlet letters.”

The ordinance faced stiff opposition and was ultimately defeated. The present scoring system was a compromise resulting from that effort, Bhatia said. The system offers more granularity into a restaurant’s health code practices, he said, but conceded that “scores are imperfect.”
 

Restaurant inspection grades in NY; C becomes A, B is Best

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Grub Street New York reports that Le Bernardin has scored an A after reinspection, but can’t figure out what the original C was for because, “the Health Department’s fancy new inspection-results site is constantly, constantly down. Every other time we’ve tried to access it in the past month, we’ve gotten a “taking too long to respond” page.

Meanwhile, “midtown sandwich joint Cer Te is rolling with the B it got from the Health Department — they’re the ‘BEST’" (photo from Metropolis/WSJ).

L.A. County wants food trucks to carry health letter grades

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Why not? Wherever people eat, they should be able to get publicly-funded information about food safety; the smart operators will market their excellent food safety.

Los Angeles County public health officials are asking the Board of Supervisors to expand to food trucks the county’s popular letter grading system that evaluates safe food handling practices. The vote, originally scheduled for Tuesday, has been pushed back a week.

If approved, 6,000 full-service catering trucks and 3,500 hot dog, churro and other limited food service carts would be covered by the ordinance. If the supervisors approve it, enforcement would first begin in unincorporated areas of the county.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of the county Department of Public Health, said,

“Even before this trend, we felt people were asking us: We go to a restaurant, we like the grading system, but what about all these trucks that are coming? How do we know? We’ve been looking at this for some time.”

Public health officials said the current program does not meet annual inspection goals because they cannot locate food vehicles that move constantly. The new ordinance will require vendors to give information about their vehicle whereabouts and mandates that the trucks be inspected twice a year.

Erin Glenn, chief executive officer of Asociacion de Loncheros, an association of lunch trucks, said,

“As long as enforcement is fair, and the inspectors treat local food vendors with respect, just like they do with the brick-and-mortar establishments, hopefully the inspection standards are the same, I think the regulations are fine. I think it’s a step in the right direction to improve public health, and we’re all for it.”
 

Village Voice don’t like disclosure

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Once trendy, now trashy, New York’s The Village Voice has nothing but disdain for NYC’s restaurant inspection grading system.

Most recently, the Voice used the dirty kitchen story to conclude, “Your kitchen is probably filthier than New York’s dirtiest dive.”

“In yet another glaring example that the Department of Health’s restaurant inspection letter grades are likely to be formidably misunderstood by the average dining Joe, researchers have found that at least one in seven home kitchens would fail the DOH inspection — in other words, score less than a C grade. …

“If the top-rated restaurant in the city can only get a C (and White Castle is at the top of the class alongside A-graded Popeye’s Chicken and McDonald’s), something must be wrong with the system.”
 

Cheater alert: New York restaurant caught posting fake grade

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Any system designed to deliver safer food is going run up against some form of hucksterism – food and fraud have always gone together. That doesn’t mean a system is hopelessly flawed, it means make it better to weed out the cheats.

The New York Daily News reports that just weeks after city officials started forcing eateries to post sanitary letter grades in their windows, the News spotted a suspicious-looking letter A at a restaurant that didn’t look grade-A.

Ming’s Chinese take-out on 9th Ave. at 33rd St. had a "Sanitary Inspection Grade" on the wall beside its counter that looked like the ones that have started to crop up in restaurant windows. It had the city seal, the Health Department logo and a helpful reminder to call 311.

But a check of city records found that – sure enough – Ming’s hadn’t earned the prized mark.

To the contrary, though the take-out’s last inspection in January came before the city started issuing letter grades, inspectors found serious health code violations. Among them: Evidence of mice, roaches and flying insects.

Inspectors also discovered that some hot food was stored at too low a temperature to be safe and that some equipment was poorly maintained.

A manager at Ming’s refused to say where he got his fake grade, saying that a company came in and then sent the letter to him. He refused to name that company – or to explain why he posted a grade he hadn’t earned. He also refused to give his name.

City officials say they haven’t received any complaints of restaurants posting fake grades, adding they’ll crack down on anyone caught cheating. Those restaurants could face a fine of $1,000.

Half of New York City restaurants get an A

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The New York Times reports that since July 28, when the department rolled out its new letter-grade rating system, 48 percent of the 250 restaurants that have had an initial inspection and, when needed, a re-inspection, have earned an A grade.

Another 31 percent earned B grades. The C rating was given to 12 percent of restaurants, and 8 percent were closed until they could correct health hazards that would endanger the public.

Since the end of July, 1,825 food establishments in the five boroughs have received an initial inspection, the department said, but many have not completed the two-stage process.

Any restaurant not receiving an A gets a mandatory follow-up inspection within two to three weeks. If the grade still falls short of an A, the restaurant can challenge the grade at an administrative tribunal, but must prominently post a “grade pending” sign until the challenge is resolved.
 

Someone got a star: NYC Health Dept.’s first Grade A bestowed

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A small deli in Long Island City, Queens, will go down in local history as being the first business to earn a Grade A from the city’s health department, which implemented its new restaurant inspection grading system on Tuesday.

Crain’s New York Business (photo from Crain’s) reports the agency is holding a press conference Wednesday morning at Spark’s Deli on 2831 Borden Ave., where health commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley will laud the small business’s accomplishment.

Co-owner Jose Araujo said,

“We serve a lot of hard-working people, construction crews and mechanics. And now they’ll know for sure that I provide good food. … We’ve done well in past inspections. There’s always something to fix or be done better, but we’ve never failed an inspection.”

On Tuesday an inspector visited his business, awarding him with a score of 10.

According to the new letter grading system, in which restaurants receive either an A, B or C grade (or fail the inspection altogether), a score of 0 to 13 qualifies as an A.

Other restaurants were inspected on Tuesday and earned A’s, but Spark’s was the first, according to health department officials.