One of the traditional, and critical, responsibilities of Public Health Departments is the inspection of "Food Service Establishments". This term certainly includes restaurants, but it also refers to food carts, festival food booths, mobile food trucks, and retail grocery stores.
This topic of restaurant inspection is always of great public interest. The restaurant inspection score listing ("Know the Score") on our website (www.scchealth.org) is consistently among the most accessed features on our monthly website statistical reports. Of special interest to many is the "Smoke-Free Dining" listing of restaurants. It is always among the top 10. In addition, over half of the comments and enquiries received from the website comment forms and from general email deal with questions or complaints about restaurants.
The public health urgency in carrying out regular food service establishment (FSE) inspections is to assure that food that is served to the public is safe and wholesome. Although we sometimes get complaints about food that doesn't taste good or that is too spicy we are not responsible for that aspect of dining. That objective sensory judgment of food is left up to the individual diner's palate.
We do, however, look at many different aspects of the operation of FSE's to make sure that food served to the public is safe. Some of the more important are:
- Temperature - There is an old saying in food service sanitation; "Keep it hot, keep it cold or don't keep it!" Temperature abuse is almost always implicated in foodborne illness outbreaks. Proper temperatures prevent the growth of microorganisms that cause illness.
- Food Contact Surfaces - Bacteria on surfaces that make contact with food such as counters, cutting boards, utensils and hands can be transferred to food. Especially important is ensuring that cutting boards used for meat, fish and poultry are not used for fresh fruits and vegetables that often are not cooked after cutting. Bacteria on food that is cooked after cutting are destroyed by heat. It is also important to either cook prepared food promptly or refrigerate it until it is cooked or served. Failure to follow these basic rules can lead to cross-contamination which occurs when, for example, poultry is prepared on a cutting surface and later fruit and vegetables are cut on the same surface without cleaning. Any bacteria on the surface will be transferred to the produce. If the produce is not cooked the resulting contamination can cause illness when the product is consumed. Another case of cross contamination occurs when cooked food is placed on a surface that was contaminated by raw food. The bacteria from the contaminated surface find a perfect environment for rapid growth on the cooked product.
- Employee Health - All licensed FSE's are required to report certain employee illnesses to the Division of Public Health. They are also required to exclude employees with certain illnesses or injuries from either performing certain food-handling tasks or from the workplace altogether.
- Food source - It is extremely important that all food served in a licensed establishment is purchased from a source approved by the Division of public health. In order to qualify the source must be inspected by local, state or federal regulatory authorities. This means that home-prepared foods are prohibited. Some of the most horrific incidents of mass illness have been the result of home-canned food being served. Mushrooms collected by untrained amateurs have also caused sporadic cases of poisoning and death, especially in some foreign countries where regulation is less stringent.
One of our past "Featured Sites" at www.scchealth.org was an excellent walk-through of a restaurant inspection on the Seattle and King County Health Department website. You can find it listed here: http://www.scchealth.org/docs/doche/featd_sites.html
If you really want to research what is required in Missouri and St. Charles County you can review the state and county food codes on our website by going here: http://www.scchealth.org/docs/ph/ph_docs/phehs/codebook.html
Our sanitarians inspect most FSE's 4 times a year. This is a greater than average inspection frequency in comparison to health departments around the country. But, this means that we only have 4 snapshots of each licensed facility each year. We count on establishing a good professional working relationship with restaurant owners and managers. Good food sanitation can be a win-win-win proposition for the Division of Public Health, the customer and the business. We also require food service sanitation training and certification for key managers of all licensed establishments.
This combination of knowledge and professionalism works most of the time. When problems do occur, the public can help by reporting them. All reports of unsanitary conditions or poor food-handling practice are taken seriously. A sanitarian visits the restaurant in question and talks with the manager and looks for the reported condition. In this way the public actively supports our mission of ensuring safe and wholesome dining in St. Charles County.