Continuing with the New York City theme, Steven Melendez has created a colorful map of rats in the Big Apple.
As Nell Casey at Gothamist explains, Melendez created the map with restaurant inspection data starting from January 1st, 2013. The number of restaurants cited for “evidence of mice or live mice,” or “evidence of rats or live rats,” was compared to the total number of restaurants in each zip code to find the percentages in the color-coded map.
Sunday night, Twitter and Instagram blew up, according to Eater, with pictures of rats running amok inside Green Eggs Cafe Midtown at 212 S. 13th Street. While everyone had thought the worst, apparently a burst sewer pipe in the basement is 
what brought the arrival of the large rodents, which has caused the shutdown of the restaurant for the day.
“Last night, a sewer pipe broke downstairs and released the rats that you saw in that picture,” a representative told Eater. “For obvious reasons, we’re closing the Midtown location to fix this pipe and make some other general improvements to the outward appearance at Midtown. We apologize for any inconvenience that this has caused.”
A French restaurant owner in Scotland has been fined £1000 for allowing rats to roam around his establishment.
The Scotsman reports Pierre Pelletier, 45, was brought to court after safety inspectors found a dead, decaying rat close to food in Le 
Marche Francais in West Maitland Street.
Edinburgh Sheriff Court heard how Pelletier had been warned on two prior occasions about the risk that rats posed to his restaurant.
The court heard that the venue is located close to tracks that were being laid for the tram network and that the works had disturbed settlements of rats.
Yesterday, in front of sheriff Michael O’Grady, Pelletier, of Haymarket Terrace, pleaded guilty to breaking food safety laws.
In the first seizure of food subject to an U.S. Food and Drug Administration detention order under the Food Safety and Modernization Act, U.S. Marshals seized food products held at the food storage and processing facility of Dominguez Foods of Washington, Inc., in Zillah, Wash., on Sept. 30, 2011.
The seized products had been subject to a detention order issued by FDA on Sept. 2, 2011, following an FDA inspection of the facility that found evidence of widespread and active rodent and insect infestation in the facility’s warehouse and processing area.
During their inspection of the Dominguez Foods facility, FDA investigators observed rodent droppings and urine stains on and around food products, rodent gnawed containers of food, a 
rodent nesting site, and one dead rodent in the warehouse, as well as live and dead insects in, on, and around food products. The investigators took immediate action, issuing a detention order covering all of the food in the facility not in hermetically sealed containers at the end of their inspection.
In a complaint filed Sept. 29, 2011, the United States alleged that the detained food was adulterated under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) due to the conditions in the warehouse documented during FDA’s inspection. The complaint asked the Court to issue a warrant of arrest for the products, which directed the U.S. Marshals to seize the products, and requested that the Court condemn and forfeit the food to the United States. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington issued a warrant of arrest for the products the same day.
“FDA will not hesitate to take immediate steps to protect the public’s health,” said Dara A. Corrigan, the FDA’s associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. “We will aggressively use our enforcement tools to prevent adulterated food from reaching the public.”
WOIA News 4 reports that Goro’s Sushi was served 25 demerits on its latest health inspection. 30 is considered a poor score by the health department. But rats and roaches are a big problem.
Goro’s owner, Mike Luna, did not want to be on camera. Trouble Shooter Mireya Villarreal tried to ask about the restaurant’s inspection 
report. But all the owner would say is, it wasn’t a good time and our crew needed to leave.
Goro’s later sent News 4 WOAI a statement saying they immediately called their pest control company and thoroughly cleaned the restaurant once they were notified of the problems.
An inspector recently followed up with the restaurant. While the report noted improvements, it also asked management to keep monitoring their rodent activity.
Australia is an Internet backwater.
In that context, the best thing about Australia is, McDonalds.
Every café and bakery and bookstore, they’ll provide 15 minutes of wi-fi if a purchase is made. Hotels will sell it to guests at $10/hour (I’m not making this up).
Not McDonalds – free wi-fi at many of their stores.
So I’ve been hanging out at a mall in Brisbane’s CBD (central business district) for the past few days, tapping McDonalds’ free wi-fi.
I never hang out at the mall.
Food courts and restaurants in shopping malls are particularly vulnerable to roach and rodent infestations because clothing stores, electronics outlets and other mall standbys aren’t subject to health regulations or inspections, and pests often sneak into malls by hiding in shipping and packaging boxes.
Kevin Chinnia, manager of Montgomery County’s health inspectors, told the Washington Examiner,
"Malls are a wide-open space, and it’s a lot more difficult to manage than if you have a stand-alone structure that you can monitor yourself.”
Virginia and Maryland health inspectors cited roughly three-quarters of all mall food vendors for violating critical health regulations during the past year, according to an analysis of health records at 12 local malls conducted by The Washington Examiner.
The Food and Drug Administration defines critical violations as those posing an "imminent health hazard" to diners. Such violations range from improper hand washing to serving contaminated food, and, depending on the severity of the infraction, can lead to a restaurant losing its food service license.
Local health officials spotted live rodents, rodent droppings or cockroaches — dead and alive, clinging to food preparation machines and even to workers — at more than 10 percent of mall eateries.
Australia is an Internet backwater.
In that context, the best thing about Australia is, McDonalds.
Every café and bakery and bookstore, they’ll provide 15 minutes of wi-fi if a purchase is made. Hotels will sell it to guests at $10/hour (I’m not making this up).
Not McDonalds – free wi-fi at many of their stores.
So I’ve been hanging out at a mall in Brisbane’s CBD (central business district) for the past few days, tapping McDonalds’ free wi-fi.
I never hang out at the mall.
Food courts and restaurants in shopping malls are particularly vulnerable to roach and rodent infestations because clothing stores, electronics outlets and other mall standbys aren’t subject to health regulations or inspections, and pests often sneak into malls by hiding in shipping and packaging boxes.
Kevin Chinnia, manager of Montgomery County’s health inspectors, told the Washington Examiner,
"Malls are a wide-open space, and it’s a lot more difficult to manage than if you have a stand-alone structure that you can monitor yourself.”
Virginia and Maryland health inspectors cited roughly three-quarters of all mall food vendors for violating critical health regulations during the past year, according to an analysis of health records at 12 local malls conducted by The Washington Examiner.
The Food and Drug Administration defines critical violations as those posing an "imminent health hazard" to diners. Such violations range from improper hand washing to serving contaminated food, and, depending on the severity of the infraction, can lead to a restaurant losing its food service license.
Local health officials spotted live rodents, rodent droppings or cockroaches — dead and alive, clinging to food preparation machines and even to workers — at more than 10 percent of mall eateries.
The cafeteria in the Pennsylvania capital building where the governor and other state legislators hang out, form cliques and toss around tater tots, has not been inspected in four years – despite a state law 
requiring annual checks — and is now closed after an infestation of rodents was discovered.
Pennsylvania Auditor General Jack Wagner said Thursday he received assurances in 2005 that the state Agriculture Department would inspect the facility, and his auditors later received false assurances that it was being inspected regularly.
Last week, Agriculture Department inspectors finally arrived at the ground-floor cafeteria, a popular coffee and lunch spot. They found a "severe" rodent infestation, including an "excessive" amount of rodent droppings on food preparation equipment and in cabinets, utensil bins and elsewhere. The droppings indicate the presence of live mice and are considered an imminent health risk.
The ground-floor cafeteria is now closed and is not expected to reopen until January.
Here’s the video of rats in a Chinatown market that sparked the story in the Honolulu Advertiser that Chapman just blogged about.
The video sparked a Department of Health inspection of Pacing’s, which was cited for a violation.
The Geller rat video has been seen by tens of thousands of people, and has spurred some to stop coming to Chinatown, according to shop owners, who say business has decreased — by 30 to 50 percent or more — over the last weeks.
Last year, Sekiya’s Restaurant in Kaimukí closed its doors for days and dumped all its food after an E. coli outbreak, which sickened seven.
The folks that run Canada’s largest grocery store chain – Loblaw Companies –are apparently just learning about pest control. They are also learning that consumers can take pictures with their cell phones and can actually use those phones to call local health types.
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The Calgary Herald reports that public complaints prompted health inspectors to visit the Westwinds location of the Real Canadian Superstore 17 times in just over a year before it was ordered closed Tuesday after the discovery of live mice, rodent feces and gnawed packaging.
Rick Holley, a microbiology professor in the University of Manitoba’s department of food science, believes shoppers have every reason to be squeamish at the thought of mice scampering over produce or gnawing on potato chip bags.
"Mice are vectors for salmonella. They carry it and shed it not unlike chicken, cattle or hogs.”
Doug Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University, said,
"People might think, ‘What’s the big deal about a little mouse poop?’ But it’s an indicator there could be a whole lot else going on.”
The incident comes weeks after a Loblaws store in Toronto — part of the same company as the Superstore chain — was shut down after a "heavy infestation"of mice and rats, including droppings on sandwich counters, was found.
Company spokeswoman Inge van den Berg said the two occurrences have prompted the store to revamp its pest control procedures.