Tag Archives: Toronto

More mice, now in a Toronto pastry tray

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Here’s one from east-end Toronto that I missed last week but Coldmud picked up from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – hockey and state-sponsored jazz).

Amateur photographer Borys Machinkowski’s photo (right, exactly as shown) shows a mouse popping out of a space between two trays of pastries sitting in the display case of Bakery On the Go at the Warden Toronto

Machinkowski. a 20-year-old Centennial College student, said in a blog post that he noticed the rodent while he and some friends were sitting in the coffee shop waiting for another friend to arrive.

Machinkowski said he pointed out the mouse to the employee working at the coffee shop, but the employee continued to sell food.

Machinkowski and his friends started telling customers about the mouse and showing them the photo they had taken.

"Being thoroughly disgusted, we decided to warn everyone who would listen that we just saw a mouse in plain sight and showed them the picture each time. They were grateful they hadn’t eaten what they had bought yet."

Their warnings stopped after a man arrived, and he turned out to be the eatery’s manager.

"Finally, another man came in and we continued our mission to warn people. We told him about the mouse and he said, ‘Huh? This is subway station. You see mice sometime. So what?’ in an irritated tone. Then we showed him the picture and his face froze. It turned out he was the manager and he promptly told us to get out, but we didn’t until they turned off the lights and closed the store for fear they’d continue selling food to people."

During an inspection by Toronto Public Health on Aug. 27, the bakery was given a conditional pass. Inspectors cited it for failure to protect food from contamination and inadequate temperature controls.

Cora Pizza in Toronto shut down due to rat infestation

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Cora Pizza, (the One Stop Pizza Shop), apparently a favorite of University of Toronto students, was shut down Dec. 21/09 by Toronto Public Health due to a rodent infestation and to prevent gross unsanitary conditions.

Among the findings were a bucket that was used for pizza sauce showing obvious "signs of contamination with dirt and mold” and "dead rats and rat droppings in the kitchen."

blogTO reported that previous inspections in March and June of this year found a long list of infractions, including failure to:

* ensure food is not contaminated/adulterated;

* use proper procedure(s) to ensure food safety;

* provide hand washing supplies; and,

* provide adequate pest control.

The Toronto Star reported that  this week’s discovery of rodents at a Spadina Ave. pizza shop and a bakery outlet at a subway station has put the spotlight on Toronto’s restaurant inspection program.

The pass-fail card system, in which a red card closes the eatery until problems are corrected, was set back by last summer’s 39-day civic workers’ strike and the fight against the H1N1 flu pandemic.

Inspectors have since been working hard to catch up.

Nearly every week in Toronto, an establishment is closed down temporarily for food safety infractions. There were 41 closures this year and 46 in 2008.

Those statistics indicate the city, which has some 16,000 restaurants, food stores and bakeries, is staying on top of the serious cases, said associate medical officer of health Dr. Howard Shapiro, who notes they inspect "probably a few hundred places a day."

Chinese restaurant to close for good after Salmonella outbreak, failed repeat inspection

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Ruby Chinese Restaurant, the beleaguered eatery at the source of a Salmonella outbreak that sickened at least 22 people and possibly contributed to the death of another, will close for good.

The Toronto Star reports that word is spreading in north Scarborough’s Chinese community that the immensely popular restaurant will not reopen after a recent salmonella outbreak.

At an emergency meeting on Sunday, according to a source, the restaurant’s three owners are said to have decided to file for bankruptcy on Monday, and have hired an accountant to prepare for auctioning off furniture and equipment.

The 17-year-old restaurant was closed by Toronto Public Health in early October. It failed another inspection two days later, with health officials citing cockroaches and a very dirty floor.

The owners were told by a pest control firm that ending the cockroach problem would require treating the entire single-storey strip mall at 1571 Sandhurst Circle, near Finch Ave. E. and McCowan Rd. As well, customers were cancelling the multi-course banquets that made up the bulk of its business.

Thank you for the Salmonella sir, can I have some more? Customers flock to shuttered restaurant

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A Toronto restaurant that made 37 of its customers barf and remains closed after two failed health inspections, is still packing them in – on the front lawn.

John He and Peter Wong waited on the manicured lawn of Ruby Chinese Restaurant Saturday afternoon for a friend to join them for lunch. The men knew about the salmonella, but thought the restaurant would be open.

"Many customers are crying that it’s closed down. "I’m healthy," adding he dines at Ruby about three times a week.

Probably not a consolation to the dead person believed to be linked to the outbreak.

The Toronto Star also reported this morning that children pulled on locked doors and the curious pressed their faces against the glass Saturday afternoon. The lights were off inside and staff were cleaning. None were available for comment.

Jeeping Huang did not know about the salmonella outbreak or failed inspections. She was surprised, not worried, and will eat at the restaurant again.

"Every restaurant works this way. They can change and make improvements," she said.

Every restaurant does not work this way, and shouldn’t.
 

Toronto restaurant at center of Salmonella outbreak fails reinspection – still closed

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Dumb things to say when 37 people are sick and 1 dead, from the same restaurant: "I eat here regularly and I have never gotten sick. Everyone in the community eats there. It has a very good reputation."

Apparently the Globe and Mail newspaper thinks so too, and published an awesome online review of Ruby, the Chinese restaurant at the center of a Salmonella outbreak. Or it was available, according to a food writer at the rival National Post newspaper, until the restaurant was closed: “review now deleted.”

Howard Shapiro, Toronto’s associate medical officer of health, said,

Despite having almost two days to clean the restaurant, the restaurant failed to "meet the requirements needed to be met to re-open.” The restaurant will remain closed until the next inspection takes place sometime this weekend.

The restaurant was shut down on Wednesday, after two health inspectors found that foods were not protected from contamination, raw meat wasn’t kept at the correct temperature, and utensils and cooking surfaces were inadequately cleaned. There was also a cockroach infestation and Shapiro said the floor was "dirtier than we would find acceptable."
 

Toronto Public Health investigating Salmonella illnesses associated with chinese restaurant; outbreak possibly linked to death

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CBC and CTV are both reporting that Toronto Public Health is investigating an outbreak of Salmonella linked to a Chinese restaurant in Scarborough. The outbreak is reportedly linked to the Ruby Chinese restaurant near McCowan Road and Finch Avenue West in Scarborough. At least 19 diners have tested positive for Salmonella after eating there  between Sept. 12 and Sept. 30.

One elderly man who died ate in the restaurant during the affected time frame, but officials are still waiting for tests to confirm whether he did in fact have salmonella poisoning.

Inspectors had been called in on September 29 after complaints but found everything up to code. When they returned Wednesday they found infractions and shut the place down.

The City of Toronto’s online restaurant inspection database shows that the restaurant had passed inspections without conditions eight times before.
 

Investigative journalists still required for food safety – even if newspapers disappear

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Toronto city councillor Brian Ashton said yesterday,

"I was stunned that the Toronto Star was able to – for the second time – expose a problem that the Board of Health seemed to be unaware of," referring to the newspaper’s "Dirty Dining" series in 2000, which prompted public health to release restaurant inspection records. "The Toronto Star is becoming more like a board of health than the Board of Health."

Food safety stories are increasingly the fodder of investigative journalists, regardless of media. We all eat, so we’re all interested to a point, although not everyone wants to go politico with every bite – sometimes it’s enough to not barf.

The recent Toronto Star series on the filth of soft-serve ice cream machines is an example of media setting the public health agenda.

Toronto Public Health is cracking down on more than 100 ice cream vendors after a Star investigation revealed hazardous levels of bacteria in soft-serve cones across the city.

Consumers can do the same thing – with pictures and video that can readily be captured by most cell phones. Send it to your local health unit.

Otherwise, D-listers like Tori Spelling (above, right, exactly as shown) set the agenda.
 

Toronto takes on feds, province, issues own food safety agenda

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I hear from local public health officials all the time, and the ones in Canada repeatedly say the single food inspection agency — known creatively as, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency – sucks.

The provincial regulators also suck.

So after years of taking it, the City of Toronto is once again trailblazing when it comes to serving the public – those who end up barfing from bad food – and has come up with its own idea of a food safety system that serves people.

Robert Cribb of the Toronto Star reports this morning that in a series of three reports to be presented to Toronto city council on Monday (available at http://www.toronto.ca/health/moh/foodsecurity.htm), foodborne illness in Toronto is rampant and that in order to have fewer people barfing:

• Ontario should consider compensating food handlers who  are too sick to come to work due to "gastrointestinal illness;"
 
•  Ontario and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency should provide "full and timely disclosure of the food safety performance of all food premises
they inspect;” and,
 
• mandatory food handler training and certification, as recommended in the Justice Haines report of 2004 (that was my contribution).

A related story maintains that cases of foodborne illness began to fall almost immediately after Toronto began making restaurant inspection results public in 2001.

John Filion, chair of the city’s board of health, said it is the clearest evidence yet of the public health benefits of transparency.

Good for Toronto, especially when the feds and the province leave the locals out to dry on outbreaks of foodborne illness. In the Aug. 2008 outbreak of listeria linked to Maple Leaf deli meats, Toronto health types said they had plenty of evidence something was amiss in July, but CFIA and others refused to go public until Aug. 17, 2008. So with a federal listeria inquiry set to begin Monday, and Maple Leaf all focused on federal regulations, how are Maple Leaf executives going to handle pesky local health units like Toronto – the ones who actually do the work, uncover outbreaks and create their own headlines.

KATIE FILION: Rodents run amuck at Toronto Loblaw’s

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A Loblaw’s Supermarket in Toronto, Canada, is closed following a customer complaint regarding a mouse inside the store.

Toronto Public Health (TPH) officials closed the store last night, and already Dinesafe, a website designed to disclose inspection results for food premises in the Toronto area, has updated its most recent inspection findings to include infractions discovered last night, such as:

•    failure to ensure food is not contaminated/adulterated;
•    failure to prevent rodent infestation; and,
•    failure to maintain hazardous food(s) at 4C (40F).

According to Dinesafe, the Dupont St. Loblaw’s has passed the last ten TPH inspections, dating back to April 2007.  But are restaurant inspections a good indicator of the quality of an establishment? Or simply a brief snapshot of a food premise at one point in time? And are web-based disclosure systems like Dinesafe the most effective way to communicate inspection results to consumers?

News reports like the ones in the Toronto Sun or Globe and Mail, websites like Dinesafe, and blogs like this or blogTO, get the information out there to consumers. What I am interested in is which of these methods is the most effective.

Don’t eat poop: Hepatitis A alert for Toronto sushi restaurant

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Toronto Public Health has identified a case of Hepatitis A in a food handler at Sushi Haru located at 635 College Street at Grace Street in Toronto. Anyone who consumed food from this restaurant on the following dates may have been exposed to the Hepatitis A virus: September 30; October 1 to 3; or October 6 to 10. …

If you ate at Sushi Haru on October 9, you may still benefit from receiving a vaccination to prevent Hepatitis A infection. The vaccine is effective for up to 14 days after coming into contact with the virus. Today is the last day that the vaccine would be effective. Call your doctor to get the vaccine, or go to a walk-in clinic.

A Fact Sheet on Hepatitis A is available at www.toronto.ca/health.