Tag Archives: restaurant

Scores on Doors too clear for UK restaurant grading schemes

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Only a Lord could get away with a report titled, Common Sense Common Safety.

It ain’t common sense if it hasn’t been thought of.

The report, published today in the U.K. by Lord Young, the Prime Minister’s adviser on health and safety law and practice, puts forward a series of policies for improving the perception of health and safety, to ensure it is taken seriously by employers and the general public, while ensuring the burden on small business is as insignificant as possible.

Wouldn’t it be better to improve health and safety, and then the perception would be improved – if there was actual data to back up the claims of improved health and safety?

The report is written in a snooty tone that apparently only the British can achieve, and was deliberated in the context of the compensation culture – those vulgar lawyers looking for recompense for slighted victims.

Prime Minister David Cameron said,

“A damaging compensation culture has arisen, as if people can absolve themselves from any personal responsibility for their own actions, with the spectre of lawyers only too willing to pounce with a claim for damages on the slightest pretext.

“We simply cannot go on like this. That’s why I asked Lord Young to do this review and put some common sense back into health and safety. And that’s exactly what he has done.”

The U.K. Food Standards Agency was quick to say the Lord backed their restaurant inspection disclosure scheme.

Under the voluntary Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, each business is given a hygiene rating (from 0-5) when it is inspected by a food safety officer from the business’s local authority. The hygiene rating shows how closely the business is meeting the requirements of food hygiene law.

I was never sure about the 0-5 rating – is 5 good or bad – whereas a letter grading has clearer meaning. The actual report contains some clues:

The good Lord says that local authority participation in the Food Standards Agency’s Food Hygiene Rating Scheme be made mandatory, and that usage of the scheme by consumers by harnessing the power and influence of local and national media.

He also says the voluntary display of ratings should be reviewed after 12 months and, if necessary, make display compulsory – particularly for those businesses that fail to achieve a ‘generally satisfactory’ rating.

“I welcome the FSA’s decision to drop the unfortunate title ‘scores on the doors’, which has been used in the past for this initiative, and its decision to drop the use of stars, which have a connotation of cost and service. I am pleased that they have decided instead to use a simple numerical scale with appropriate descriptors. These decisions were based on the results of independent research with consumers and this is what they found to be clearest and easiest to use.”

Scores on doors may be too direct for the Lord; I hope the Aussies keep using it. And I look forward to the 0-5 studies being published in a peer-reviewed journal so mere mortals can review the research.

The good Lord also cites the Los Angeles example of restaurant inspection disclosure – they use letter grades – and inflates an already dubious estimate by stating there was a 20 per cent drop in the number of people being admitted to hospital for food related illnesses after the introduction of the letter grades.

Restaurant inspection is a snapshot in time and disclosure is no panacea. It can boost the overall culture of food safety, hold operators accountable, and is a way of marketing food safety so that consumers can choose.

NY restaurants argue their grade at Night Court

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The health department tribunal is, according to the New York Times, a little-publicized court system that metes out penalties for violations of the city sanitary code.

It has been there for years, in a nondescript government office in Lower Manhattan where more than a dozen administrative law judges escort their charges into cramped rooms and hear them wrangle over infractions, in a ritual reminiscent of visiting the principal’s office.

But in the weeks since the city adopted a new system requiring restaurants to post large, brightly colored letter grades rating their cleanliness and safety, the tribunal has become a high-stakes food court of last resort where hundreds of restaurant owners and their representatives trudge each day to defend what they say are their very livelihoods.

Whether from Dunkin’ Donuts or Le Bernardin, whose case was called last week, they stand in line behind two strips of grimy gray tape on the floor to check in at a reception desk. Then they wait, sometimes all day, to defend their kitchens, many in hopes of nudging a humiliating C up to a bearable B, or turning that middle-of-the-class B into a gold-star A.

At one recent hearing, the judge asked Jay Gavrilov, director of dining services at a residence for the elderly in Battery Park City, if he had anything to say. He responded with an impassioned speech: he was not seeking to reduce his fines or dismiss the violations that had earned him a B.

“My purpose here is to try to get an A to put up,” he said plaintively, “for the well-being and mental well-being of my 80-to-105-year-old residents.”
 

Call for mandatory display of food grades in Wales

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Even the BBC is realizing that asking food businesses in Wales to voluntarily display the results of their inspection rating is, uh, hopeless.

The public will be able to access ratings through a searchable database, which will be overseen by the Food Standards Agency.

Food safety campaigners like Maria Battle, a senior director of Consumer Focus Wales, welcomed the principle of the scheme but said it was under-mined by the practice of voluntary display

"And if it is a low food rating – below three – then it’s very, very rare that they display their rating. And they’re the businesses that people would choose not to eat in."

However Battle and others overstate their case when they say that "Mandatory display in Los Angeles resulted in an immediate 20% reduction in food-related illnesses – people being hospitalized. That saved hundreds of thousands of pounds and also a lot of preventable human suffering."

That’s become an oft-quoted stat, especially as New York City has gone through the angst of going public, but the paper is so full of holes I’m not sure how it got published.

The real benefit of public displays of food service inspection grades is the public shame and embarrassment, which may force operators to do better, and that people talk about it, so it enhances the overall microbial food safety culture. We’ve written a couple of papers about the topic based on research we did, but they’re not published yet, so I won’t violate my own advice and do science by press release.

Professor Hugh Pennington, who chaired the inquiry into the 2005 E.coli outbreak in South Wales which claimed the life of five-year-old schoolboy Mason Jones, five years ago this week, said,

"In principle I’m a believer in having this system as a mandatory system because it is self-evident that commercial pressure on a business – like fewer customers going in – is a very strong incentive for them to up their game."

The U.K. Food Standards Agency, which also told consumers they should cook raw sprouts until they are piping hot to avoid salmonella, is confident that voluntary display will work as consumers will draw their own conclusions when businesses choose not to display their Food Hygiene Ratings.

There is no published research that I know of which supports this statement.

We have published a review of why restaurant inspection disclosure is important. And there’s a few more things coming out.

Filion, K. and Powell, D.A. 2009. The use of restaurant inspection disclosure systems as a means of communicating food safety information. Journal of Foodservice 20: 287-297.

Abstract

??The World Health Organization estimates that up to 30% of individuals in developed countries become ill from food or water each year. Up to 70% of these illnesses are estimated to be linked to food prepared at foodservice establishments. Consumer confidence in the safety of food prepared in restaurants is fragile, varying significantly from year to year, with many consumers attributing foodborne illness to foodservice. One of the key drivers of restaurant choice is consumer perception of the hygiene of a restaurant. Restaurant hygiene information is something consumers desire, and when available, may use to make dining decisions.
 

Food service workers show up when sick; excuse me while I barf

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A new report says more than 60 per cent of restaurant employees choose to show up for work instead of staying home when they’re sick because they have no insurance and no paid sick time.

Kim Severson of the New York Times writes the report, called “Serving While Sick,” is based on more than 4,000 surveys and hundreds of interviews with employers and employees. It is intended to put pressure on the restaurant industry to improve conditions for its workers. The Restaurant Opportunities Centers United is one of two groups presenting the report at a Congressional briefing today.
 

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 cleaning cloths pose health risk, says study

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I have a number of anecdotal studies going on whenever I go to the supermarket, a restaurant, a baby doctor, and other places.

When we go to a roadhouse-style restaurant, I often watch the servers clean the table with some sort of cloth, and I’ll ask, what is the cloth cleaned with or soaked in? They usually point to some sorta sanitary solution, but aren’t too knowledgeable about how often it’s changed or cleaned. Same with those aprons the chefs are always wiping their hands on – I have dreams of large sample sizes.

The U.K. Health Protection Agency does have some resources so set about to sample those clothes used to wipe down tables in restaurants and takeaways and found they are often contaminated with E coli, listeria and other potentially dangerous bacteria.

The Guardian reports that cloths used to clean surfaces where food is prepared need to be changed regularly or thoroughly disinfected to prevent the growth of bacteria that can cause food poisoning.

HPA researchers sampled 133 cloths used for cleaning in 120 restaurants and takeaways in the north-east of England. They told the HPA’s annual conference at the University of Warwick today that 56% of the cloths contained unacceptable levels of bacteria. The most common were enterobacteriaceae (found on 86 cloths) E coli (21), Staphylococcus aureus (six) and listeria (five).

Only a third of restaurant kitchens (32%) were following the recommendation to use disposable cloths and change them regularly. The remainder had reusable cloths; in 15% of the kitchens, staff were unsure how often they were replaced.

John Harford, of the HPA’s food, water and environmental microbiology laboratory, said there was no reason to suppose restaurant kitchens in the north-east operated differently from those elsewhere in the country. He pointed to the potentially serious consequences for those eating food in or from such restaurants, adding,

"We have had certain outbreaks of food poisoning at a restaurant where we have isolated salmonella from the person who has eaten the meal and we have found salmonella on the cloth in the kitchen as well.”

While most restaurants disinfected their reusable cloths every 10 to 24 hours, a number of restaurants left it longer than 24 hours and some did not know how often their cloths were disinfected.
 

Two salmonella outbreaks not related to DeCoster eggs

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Salmonella is everywhere. And while the salmonella-in-eggs-from-Iowa outbreak is capturing media attention, other outbreaks continue.

The LaCrosse Tribune reports that salmonella poisoning did sicken about 30 people in Vernon County, Wisconsin late last week, but the illness is not thought to be connected to the recent nationwide egg recall.

The Wisconsin Lab of Hygiene confirmed Tuesday that patients who came into Vernon Memorial Healthcare had salmonella poisoning, Vernon County Health Department Director Beth Johnson said.

All of the cases were related to people who attended the same private party, Johnson said, and no local businesses or restaurants were involved.

While eggs are suspected in the outbreak, "it has nothing to do with the current egg recall," she said.

Meanwhile, a popular Mexican restaurant near Bakersfield, Calif., was forced to shut their doors Thursday, after four people were sickened with salmonella poisoning. Two of them remain hospitalized.

The Kern County health department says Don Perico may be the common denominator in these illnesses.

The sign posted on the restaurant’s front doors says the restaurant is remodeling, but the health department says they’re the ones who closed the doors. "There had been some past examples of significant violations," said Matt Constantine with the Health Department. "We have worked through them, we have allowed them to stay open. But in this case because of the potential health risk we took immediate action."
 

New York celebrity hot spot La Esquina shut down, again

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Celebrities are a terrible source of information about all things food, and worse when it comes to food safety.

DNAinfo reports the New York City Department of Health closed down taco hot spot La Esquina after a Monday restaurant inspection, marking the celeb-frequented eatery’s second shutdown since May.

La Esquina’s "critical" violations included inadequate refrigeration and holding large amounts of food above maximum temperatures.

In total, the restaurant racked up 64 violation points — well above the 28 necessary to earn a "C" letter grade under the department’s new system.

DNAinfo says that La Esquina’s “secret” underground passageway and cellar level restaurant have helped it earn big name fans including George Clooney, Kate Hudson and Julia Roberts.

But “combustible ceilings and inadequate egress” in those same area’s provoked the Department of Building’s spring shutdown.
 

Nosestretcher alert: Illinois paper perpetuates stereotypes about local food

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The reporters at the Rockford Register Star in Illinois probably meant well, with a feature about the important role of local food inspectors, but they sorta ruin it by beginning the story with:

If you haven’t grown it, cleaned it and cooked your food yourself, you’re eating at your own risk.

It is entirely possible to grow food, and clean it and cook it all by yourself – and completely mess things up and make people barf.

Back to the story, Winnebago County Health Department sanitarians Gail Goldman and Karen Hobbs and four colleagues work to cut the risk of foodborne illness by checking out more than 1,600 establishments such as restaurants, grocery stores, schools, hospitals, nursing homes, gas stations, concession stands and other places offering food and drinks for public consumption.

In 2009, the Health Department’s sanitarians performed 5,109 inspections the most important part of which, Goldman and Hobbs said, was education.

Hobbs said the last thing that made her think she has seen everything on the job was “a towel used to wipe a cutting board and then used to wipe a face. There was quite a bit of education going on that day.”

He may know molecular but he don’t know noro; Fat Duck restaurant ranked 1

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BBC News reports that the Fat Duck restaurant, owned by chef Heston Blumenthal, has been named the U.K.’s best restaurant for the third year in a row by the Good Food Guide and described as producing "world-beating dishes for the bedazzled throngs."

The guide, compiled by consumer group Which?, should be more discerning on behalf of consumers, like the 529 who were left barfing with norovirus after dining at the Duc.

The tasting menu includes a course called Sound of the Sea, during which the diner eats smoked fish, edible "sand" and "seaweed" while listening to seagulls on an iPod.

I’m going to hurl.