Tag Archives: inspection

Kimchi crackdown in Korea

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The Korea Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that it conducted a joint inspection with local governments on kimchi producers and ingredient makers over a 2-week period earlier this month in order to ensure that consumers are free from foodborne illnesses.

Of more than 1,000 companies inspected, 140 were cited for having poor sanitary conditions or failing to conduct self-quality checks before selling the food products.

Kimchi is a traditional fermented Korean dish made of vegetables.
 

Audit finds sanitation problems at some Canadian meat, poultry plants

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There’s nothing new here, but once again, the Americans say the Canadians sorta suck at food safety, and the Canadians say, politely, thanks, we’ve fixed that.

The Toronto Star reports tonight that an American audit concluded Canadian Food Inspection Agency documents often painted an inaccurate picture of the conditions at some of Canada’s meat and poultry plants where sanitation problems persisted.

The audit, which looked at 23 of the 455 establishments certified to export to the U.S. between Aug. 25 and Oct. 1, 2009, identified weaknesses particularly in the areas of sanitation, oversight and record keeping.

A review of manuals and procedures at the food inspection agency’s administrative offices found acceptable controls for sanitation, but auditors found a different story at some plants.

“The actual conditions of the establishment visits were often not entirely consistent with the corresponding documentation,” the report says.

Among the sanitation issues identified in the report were: not consistently identifying contaminated product and inconsistently verifying plants were taking adequate corrective actions to problems.

Agriculture Minister Gerry-listeria-is funny- Ritz, responded with a statement emailed to The Canadian Press on Monday, stating,

“This audit is from a year ago and in that time our government has invested an additional $75 million to improve food safety and are hiring 170 new inspectors.”

Uh-huh.

Food safety shake-up for NZ restaurant inspection

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New Zealand restaurants and food service outlets feed 1.5 million people daily.
Food safety is an integral part of this experience. It’s a competitive advantage and an absolute necessity for one of the country’s cornerstone industries; it’s a customer’s expectation and right to buy food, enjoy it and live to tell the tale.

So says Steve Mackenzie, chief executive of the Restaurant Association of New Zealand, writing in the New Zealand Herald.

But the hospitality business is about to get a shake up by way of a long-awaited Food Bill that will focus on food safety. The intent of the bill is to move food regulation in line with other developed countries, by shifting from an inspection-based system to a risk-based approach.

Whereas the present system involves an environmental health officer calling unannounced and touring the premises, the new operations will involve proprietor records, premise inspection and interviews with staff.

The Restaurant Association of New Zealand represents a select group of hospitality businesses and has been involved in consultation and pilot-testing of this new programme. Most association members support the new bill.

Members who participated in trials reported that they liked having control and accountability of their business back in their hands.

Simple documentation procedures, one handy manual covering all food safety aspects and clear guidelines for staff were also useful. In many cases the proposed changes were less onerous than the current programmes.

But with less than 12 months until transition, more than 90 per cent of the country’s eateries haven’t registered. That’s around 13,500 businesses.

A survey in April that confirmed the association’s worst fears: many business operators will wait until the last minute to make changes.

Worse still, many are not aware the changes are coming, and even those who were aware that the review was taking place, more than 55 per cent had little knowledge of the impact that this would have on their businesses in less than a year.

And despite knowing that there is proposed change, 60 per cent of those surveyed have made little or no preparation.

The biggest hurdle as we have seen in our survey results is awareness. There are many businesses that simply do not know they need to make changes.

The association recommends that the select committee working on the bill considers extending the first year transition of high-risk businesses from 12 months to 24, to ensure that under-resourced councils will be able to properly assist with implementation.

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.

New egg safety plans unveiled by industry and government

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Philip Brasher of the Des Moines Register reports exclusively this morning that egg producers and government regulators are separately taking steps to improve egg safety in the wake of a nationwide salmonella outbreak that was tied to farms in Iowa.

Producers "want nothing else to happen like what happened in Iowa," said Howard Magwire, vice president of government relations for the United Egg Producers. The trade group is developing safety standards for the industry that would go beyond federal regulations.

Good. Because government sets minimal standards that repeatedly cannot even catch the food safety outliers. Consumers, the ones who buy eggs, and producers, the ones who sell eggs and all suffer during an outbreak, deserve better, and the best way to do that is take charge and stop waiting for Godot or government.

The United Egg Producers is developing industry standards that will mirror the agency’s production rules and go a step further by requiring participating producers to vaccinate all hens against salmonella. Because of contamination that the food agency found in feed at one of the Iowa operations, the producers’ group also is considering writing sanitation standards for feed mills, Magwire said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced plans to inspect every major farm in the nation, starting with operations that have had past trouble with government officials, and it is working on coordinating oversight with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Sixteen inspections had been carried out by midmonth. The agency expects to conduct about 600 inspections in the next 14 months.

Meanwhile, the USDA and FDA have given themselves until Nov. 30 to come up with a plan for training employees to spot food-safety problems, according to a Sept. 15 letter. "It is imperative that field employees are properly educated as to these responsibilities," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack wrote in the letter. Vilsack told The Des Moines Register that the food agency will train USDA egg inspectors to spot problems on egg farms.

About time.
 

Dirty dining in Vegas: Hot N Juicy Crawfish

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I’m not sure I understand the difference between crayfish and crawfish (wiki gives it a shot) but after posting about vibrio from crayfish, a devoted barfblogger sent this story from Las Vegas about the Hot and Juicy Crawfish.

KTNV reports the Southern Nevada Health District recently paid a visit to the restaurant and slapped it with 49 demerits, prompting its closure.

Inspectors found cooked crawfish being stored at the wrong temperature, live crawfish in a sink next to dirty dishes, dirty floors – including dead crawfish on the floor of a walk-in freezer – and dried food debris caked to shelves and "clean" kitchen knives.

Inspectors also say three employees were working without valid health cards, a requirement for anyone working with or around food, and a kitchen worker was cited for not properly washing his hands after handling the trash.

Open once again with an "A" grade after re-inspection, Channel 13 Action News stopped by Hot and Juicy Crawfish to speak with the manager about the restaurant’s high number of demerits.

An employee interviewed by KTNV — Channel 13 Action News — said the owner was not available but subsequently added, “We’re not the dirtiest restaurant in Las Vegas. It was a lot of little technicalities. “
 

FDA approach to food safety ‘wander around and hope to bump into something’

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"’I refuse to buy shrimp in the U.S. We’ve inspected plants in Vietnam. Those plants are state-of-the-art. They’re certainly better than shrimp-handling in the US."

So says Roger Berkowitz, CEO of the Boston-based Legal Sea Foods restaurant chain, who insists Asian shrimp is gaining in the U.S., not because it’s cheaper but because it’s safer.

That food safety nugget was delivered in an otherwise mundane series of articles published this week by the Christian Science Monitor.

There’s also some sharp words for the two primary U.S. inspection agencies, the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. USDA is inspection-focused. US law requires it to inspect every carcass of meat and poultry that it’s responsible for, even though numerous scientific reports have questioned the effectiveness of those rapid conveyor-belt inspections.

"There is an awful lot of money being spent on guys standing around watching the chickens fly by," says Glenn Morris, director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and a former official at the Food Safety and Inspection Service at the USDA. "It’s hard to tell what you are getting for your money."

The USDA’s costly carcass-by-carcass inspection soaks up about 60 percent of US food-safety funding, even though it covers only about 20 percent of the food Americans eat (mostly meat). That leaves the FDA with only around 40 percent of the funding, even though it’s responsible for ensuring the safety of 80 percent of the food supply. With less funding, it’s difficult for the FDA to inspect food facilities on a regular basis.

"In my mind, [the FDA] doesn’t have an inspection system," says Scott Hurd, a veterinary professor at Iowa State University and former deputy undersecretary of agriculture for food safety at the USDA. "It has a ‘wander around and hope you bump into something’ " approach.

Numerous outbreaks linked to Mexican produce earlier this decade spurred the Mexican industry to clean up its image by developing various voluntary standards. For example, México Calidad Suprema is a generic brand that growers and packers commit to operate by high food-safety standards.

"Nobody ensures that" quality, says Frank Pope, who exports carrots produced in Queretaro, in central Mexico, to the US. "The market takes care of it."

Such faith in the market and voluntary efforts by the Mexican growers and packers have won over some U.S. wholesalers. "They’re working very hard to counteract that" taint, says Peter John Condakes, whose New England produce wholesale and distributing company buys more than half of its Roma tomatoes from Mexican companies. "Truthfully, in a lot of cases, the packing sheds are as strict or more strict than in the United States."

NYC’s ‘Obama fried chicken’ fails at food safety

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Forget the name: Obama Fried Chicken sucks at food safety.

In 2009, two New York City fast-food joints started calling themselves Obama Fried Chicken, raising concerns about old racial stereotypes. Last week, according to Grub Street, the Harlem Obama Fried Chicken was closed by the Health Department after scoring 115 violation points, almost 100 points past the C grade.

This is how bad a restaurant can do on an inspection:

1) Hot food item not held at or above 140º F.
2) Cold food item held above 41º F (smoked fish and reduced oxygen packaged foods above 38 ºF) except during necessary preparation.
3) Food Protection Certificate not held by supervisor of food operations.
4) Appropriately scaled metal stem-type thermometer or thermocouple not provided or used to evaluate temperatures of potentially hazardous foods during cooking, cooling, reheating and holding.
5) Evidence of rats or live rats present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas.
6) Live roaches present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas.
7) Filth flies or food/refuse/sewage-associated (FRSA) flies present in facility’s food and/or non-food areas. Filth flies include house flies, little house flies, blow flies, bottle flies and flesh flies. Food/refuse/sewage-associated flies include fruit flies, drain flies and Phorid flies.
8) Hand washing facility not provided in or near food preparation area and toilet room. Hot and cold running water at adequate pressure to enable cleanliness of employees not provided at facility. Soap and an acceptable hand-drying device not provided.
9) Personal cleanliness inadequate. Outer garment soiled with possible contaminant. Effective hair restraint not worn in an area where food is prepared.
10) Food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service.
11) Food contact surface not properly washed, rinsed and sanitized after each use and following any activity when contamination may have occurred.
12) Sanitized equipment or utensil, including in-use food dispensing utensil, improperly used or stored.
13) Facility not vermin proof. Harborage or conditions conducive to attracting vermin to the premises and/or allowing vermin to exist.
14) Covered garbage receptacle not provided or inadequate, except that garbage receptacle may be uncovered during active use. Garbage storage area not properly constructed or maintained; grinder or compactor dirty.
15) Pesticide use not in accordance with label or applicable laws. Prohibited chemical used/stored. Open bait station used.
16) Canned food product observed dented and not segregated from other consumable food items.
17) Non-food contact surface improperly constructed. Unacceptable material used. Non-food contact surface or equipment improperly maintained and/or not properly sealed, raised, spaced or movable to allow accessibility for cleaning on all sides, above and underneath the unit.
18) Food service operation occurring in room used as living or sleeping quarters.
19) Proper sanitization not provided for utensil ware washing operation.
 

Ice can cause food safety headache; Savannah vendors pay a hefty price

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Amy and I were talking about Savannah, Georgia, yesterday – the self-proclaimed home of southern charm and hospitality — and how we stopped and walked around town while traveling in 2009, did some sightseeing, and left unimpressed.

Curt Bridgett likes the place and decided to open an Italian ice cart.

The Savannah Morning News reports that in a town teeming with tourists, especially during the sweltering summer months, Bridgett thought Little Jimmy’s Italian Ices would be a hit. What he hadn’t counted on was that getting a business off the ground takes a lot more than a good idea and the willingness to work hard.

Dealing with zoning ordinances, health codes, licenses and permits and a host of other paperwork has become a job in itself. He’s realizing what many small and micro-business owners have learned — that entrepreneurship comes with a price.

Bridgett said, "I don’t understand why my business is illegal. Why can’t I just make a living?"

According to the Chatham County Mobile Food Service Unit Checklist, Bridgett must have:

— A hand-washing sink with hot water
— An electric cooler/freezer
— A bricks-and-mortar home base such as a restaurant or commercial kitchen in which food containers or supplies are kept, handled, prepared, packaged or stored for transport, sale or service elsewhere

Bridgett currently has a solar-heated gravity water tank, an insulated cooler and a storage facility for his product, but those don’t meet the standards.

"It’s just flavored ice," Bridgett said. "It has no dairy, nothing to spoil."

C. Todd Jones, Chatham County environmental health director said,

"Just because something isn’t cooked doesn’t mean that it isn’t prone to cross-contamination or harboring bacteria. The rules apply equally, whether we are inspecting a large, well-known restaurant or a small mom-and-pop operation. Although it may seem like a blanket approach, it is our job to make sure that anyone selling food items — and ice is considered food — is taking the proper steps to avoid contamination."

And he argued there have been cases where something as innocuous as ice has caused harm including outbreaks involving hepatitis, E. coli, norovirus and salmonella
 

Listeria-positive Tyson plant in Buffalo shut down by USDA

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The Buffalo News reports that a Tyson meat processing plant on Perry Street has been shut down by federal regulators after inspectors found violations during follow-up testing stemming from an August recall of deli meat produced at the Buffalo facility.

The plant suspended operations Tuesday after an inspection by the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, the federal agency said Wednesday.

The shutdown was triggered by the results of sampling that the federal inspectors conducted during a food safety assessment, the agency said. That assessment was linked to the USDA’s activities at the Perry Street plant since the deli meat recall, said Gary Mickelson, a Tyson spokesman.

The plant employs 560 workers. About 480 workers are affected by what Mickelson described as a “temporary suspension of operations.”

In August, about 380,000 pounds of deli meat produced at the plant and sold at Walmart was voluntarily recalled after a sample tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes.

The plant had two similar recalls in 2004. Tyson first voluntarily recalled 442 pounds of cooked ham in August 2004 after a sample tested positive for Listeria. In November 2004, the company recalled another 50,000 pounds of hot dogs, prompted by an unspecified customer complaint. There were no reports of consumer illnesses in either case.