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You've Been Poisoned
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
You've Been Poisoned
If the Board of Health required restaurant owners to post their inspection letter-grades in the window, would it affect where you chose to eat?
Los Angeles County has had this policy in effect for a decade, and the highly-visible placement of an "A", "B" or "C" grade has had a positive effect on food safety, writes Glenn Collins, for The New York Times:
Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, director of public health for Los Angeles County, said an independent study showed that its letter system had not only reduced food-borne illness outbreaks associated with restaurants, but also had lowered associated hospitalizations by 20 percent.
Collins reports that New York City will be implementing the same policy in 2010, raising a hue and cry from fearful restaurant owners. The main argument stems from the fact that the restaurant will be required to display their letter grade immediately following its annual surprise inspection by the Board of Health, though an appeal hearing to challenge the grade can't happen sooner than three weeks after the inspection.
Citations with number values are issued to restaurant operators for infractions ranging from lack of "Employees Must Wash Hands" signs, evidence of living or dead vermin and their feces, moldy food and plumbing leaks. In New York City, a cumulative score of 28 results in the restaurant being immediately closed.
Philadelphia's agency is Environmental Health Services, which performs risk-based evaluations. The higher the likelihood of the food being processed to contain pathogens, the more heavily associated infractions are weighted. The Office of Food Protection provides training to workers on safe handling and cooking of hazardous foods.
WelcometoPhilly.com created this Google Map last year that allows users to type in the name of any local restaurant, bakery or food truck, among others, and view its record of inspections.
That said, if you dine out with any regularity, you're going to get food poisoning now and then. According to the Center for Disease Control, very few cases of food poisoning reach life-threatening outbreak status like the recent peanut-salmonella scare.
In his article for the Associated Press, Mike Stobbe writes, "Next time you have a case of diarrhea that lasts a day or more, chances are better than 1 in 3 that it was food poisoning."
Lovely. He goes on in this fashion, noting that:
Food poisoning affects an estimated 25 percent of Americans every year. That compares with roughly 30 percent of people in industrialized countries, according to the World Health Organization. The toll is much higher in developing countries, where diarrheal diseases are a major cause of death for children.
So, really, we've got it good. You can snag a carton of free-range eggs and make brownie batter you can eat off a spoon, order your pork tenderloin "medium" in a good restaurant, or purchase a chunk of organic ground beef and make steak tartare without fear. Those with compromised immune systems � very young children and the elderly, especially � and pregnant women,� must exercise greater caution eating potentially hazardous foods.
San Diego enforced this kind of system when I was in school there. It didn't stop me from grabbing some grub back then. But it would now.
This should abolutely be implemented here. I look at Philly restaurant inspections all the time, but unless more people than just me do that restaurants won't get more serious about cleanliness. I am constantly dissapointed with some of my favorite restaurants and their poor inspections. But in the end I don't reaturn if there are consistent infractions.
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