Tag Archives: restaurant inspection

Raw is still risky: New Brunswick (that’s in Canada) health officials say no to restaurants serving beef tartare

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Health officials in New Brunswick are clamping down on restaurants serving beef tartare because the dish, considered by some a delicacy, violates the province’s food regulations.

Kevin Bissett of The Globe and Mail writes that over the past month, 11 restaurants have been given notice to stop serving raw or undercooked meat. The notice came as a surprise to chef Luc Doucet at the Black Rabbit restaurant in Moncton, N.B.

“I was blindsided,” he said in an interview Monday. “I got an email from health inspector that they needed a meeting and they showed up Thursday and served us a letter to cease all tartare operations and take it off the menu.”

The letter said current regulations don’t allow such foods to be served. “Our department was recently made aware that ground beef prepared as per the request of the customer and/or steak tartare is presently available at your food premises,” the letter stated. “This practice must cease immediately as it is in direct violation of the New Brunswick food regulation.”

Doucet said it appears officials were responding to a complaint, even though he’s never heard of anyone becoming sick from eating the dish (huh? – dp). He said he didn’t appreciate the way officials addressed the issue.

“It was not to ask us to provide our procedure for tartare or ground beef at the restaurant,” he said. “It was more, cease every dish that you have, and a lot of my restaurant friends have tartare on the menu.”

Of concern is that undercooked meat can contain pathogens that can make people sick. In a statement, the province said it’s working on establishing how such dishes can be served safely.

“These letters have not been issued as the result of people becoming ill from consuming these foods — instead, they are issued because of general food safety concerns, as eating raw or lightly cooked meats may increase the risk of food poisoning,” wrote Bruce Macfarlane, a spokesman for the Department of Health.

New Brunswick regulations include minimum cooking temperatures for meats such as beef, pork and poultry. The statement said for items like sushi and sous vide, policies are in place to support safe consumption.

Doucet said his beef tartare is composed of a quality cut of meat that is sliced in small cubes rather that ground up, and he said he has sampled tartare in restaurants across the country.

 “Every time I go to Quebec, I have tartare in some form,” he said.

Face the face: Restaurant inspection adjudication

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Administrative adjudication can serve as a quasi-judicial forum for resolving disputes resulting from government regulations. New York City recently required restaurants to post letter grades reflecting their compliance with food safety regulations and incorporated an easily accessible administrative adjudication system into its policy design. This study examines the implementation of this feature of the policy by using a regression discontinuity framework to explore the effects of the grading policy on adjudication processes and regulatory outcomes.

Quantitative data included 222,527 food safety inspection records (2007–2014); qualitative data included interviews, observations, and document review. Restaurants were more likely to have violations reduced and grades improved at adjudication when grades were at stake. Moreover, adjudication outcomes were highly sensitive to score differences near grade cut-points. Professional representatives helped restaurants to negotiate the interpretation of rules in the quasi-judicial proceedings, softening rigidity of regulations. Representatives’ expertise was consistent with being “repeat players,” which may distort the use of such forums to ensure justice and fairness.

This study illuminates the ramifications of including alternative dispute resolution systems in the implementation of regulatory policies.

By the letter of law? The effects of administrative adjudication for resolving disputes in NYC’s restaurant grading initiative, 27 May 2021

The American Review of Public Administration

Diana Silver, Micah Rothbart, Jin Yung Bae

https://doi.org/10.1177/02750740211016566

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/02750740211016566

Restaurant worker training effectiveness during covid-19

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The restaurant business has turned into a dynamic and ever-growing industry. So, food safety must be a priority for these establishments, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of training intervention on the health and food safety knowledge, attitude, and self-reported practice (KAP) of restaurant food handlers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This quasi-experimental study was conducted on 159 restaurant food handlers in Tehran, Iran. The training intervention was developed based on the latest global guidelines. The KAP of the subjects was measured before and after the training. Fisher’s exact test, paired t test, and repeated measures ANOVA were used for statistical analysis. Data analysis was done using the IBM_SPSS software. The total knowledge scores of participants were low (17.6%), moderate (35.2%), and good (47.2%) before training, which were changed to 5% (low), 23.9% (moderate), and 71.1% (good) after training. The total pretraining attitude scores were 0.6, 77.4, 18.2, and 3.8% that were changed to 0% (strongly negative), 49.1% (negative), 33.3% (positive), and 17.6% (strongly positive), respectively. Also, the self-reported practice scores of the participants before training were 1.3, 56, and 42.7 that were changed to 0% (weak), 26.4% (acceptable), and 73.6% (desirable) after the intervention, respectively. Paired t test results showed a statistically significant increase in all scores. The interaction of training with age and education was statistically significant in increasing the knowledge and attitude scores of the participants by the repeated measures ANOVA.

Improving the KAP of food handlers by health and food safety training can improve the status of restaurants and minimize the outbreak of pandemic diseases, including COVID-19, which is an effective step in community health. Thus, it is an urgent need for policymakers to design an online system of continuous food safety training for food handlers.

A quasi-experimental study on the effect of health and food safety training intervention on restaurant food handlers during the COVID-19 pandemic, 25 April 2021

Food Science & Nutrition

Fatemeh Mohammadi-Nasrabadi, Yeganeh Salmani, and Fatemeh Esfarjani

DOI: 10.1002/fsn3.2326

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/fsn3.2326

Restaurant owner in Wales continued to serve food despite cockroach infestation

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It’s been 10 years since we were in Cardiff and my father’s home of Newport, Wales, and I felt strangely at home, but maybe it was the universal speak of food safety.

A cockroach infestation was discovered in the kitchen of a Cardiff takeaway by inspectors after the owner ignored a request to deep clean the restaurant.

Flame Grillhouse, in Clare Road, Riverside, was visited by food hygiene officers from Cardiff Council where they found dead and live cockroaches in the kitchen, preparation area and front service area.

Owner Mohammed Hussain was told by pest control contractors to close his business for the building to be deep cleaned but he failed to carry out the request and carried on trading.

A sentencing hearing at Cardiff Crown Court on Tuesday heard customers could have been at risk of salmonella, E. coli, and typhoid fever as a result of the infestation.

Prosecutor Nik Strobl said the business had initially been given a one star hygiene rating which had been upgraded to a three star rating in 2018.

Describing the incriminating inspection, the barrister said: “There was evidence of full life cycle cockroach infestation at the business. There were live and dead cockroaches found at various stages of maturity.”

He added that despite being told about the problem, Hussain failed to undertake cleaning of his business and continued to serve food in spite of the infestation.

After the discovery, the defendant agreed to voluntarily close the restaurant and on September 3, another inspection was carried which satisfied the officers the infestation had been eradicated.

The restaurant reopened on September and currently has a four star hygiene rating as of November 6, 2019.

Defence barrister William Bebb said his client fully accepted his culpability for the infestation and wished to apologise to the court.

Sentencing, Judge Niclas Parry said: “There would have been a serious risk of public health. Salmonella, E. coli and typhoid fever can all be caused when cockroaches and human consumption cross paths.

“The matter is aggravated by you paying lip service to your obligations and you ignoring more than one warning. You were aware there was an issue but you let it fester.”

Hussain was sentenced to four months imprisonment suspended for 18 months. He was also ordered to carry out 80 hours unpaid work and to pay £750 in costs.

Authorities shut Mecca restaurant after 18 suffer food poisoning

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Gulf News reports 18 people suffered food poisoning after they were served at a famous restaurant in the Saudi holy city of Mecca, prompting authorities to close it down.

Municipal authorities in Mecca shut down the restaurant in line with a related decision from the Ministry of Municipal and Village Affairs that cited a health report blaming the eatery for the incident.

The restaurant has been closed down for one month with a name-to-shame notice posted on its front, saying the shutdown was due to food poisoning.

In recent months, Saudi Arabia has stepped up inspection tours of commercial establishments nationwide to ensure compliance with health rules, including precautions against COVID-19.

Sewage leak and mouse droppings at takeaway in south London

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Tristan Kirk of MSN writes a south London takeaway has been shut down after inspectors discovered a mouse infestation and raw sewage on the kitchen floor (that’s late 1980s great hair, right).

Chicken wings were being defrosted in the filthy kitchen at Dallas Chicken & Ribs despite sewage leaking from broken drain pipes, Wimbledon magistrates’ court heard.

A routine inspection by Wands­worth council uncovered used toilet paper on the floor, mouse droppings at the back of the kitchen and on a chopping board and ­“visible faecal matter” coming from the drains.

Environmental health official David Stupples, who served a prohibition notice on the business last week, told the court: “We found that there was an imminent risk to public health. It was flooded with raw sewage, including visible faecal matter.

“The drain pipes could be seen emanating with raw sewage, there was also evidence of mice droppings in the rear section of the kitchen.”

He supplied photos of the filth, including a dirty mop bucket containing sewage next to the sink where the chicken wings were being defrosted.

Referring to the photos shown to magistrates, Mr Stupples said: “Faecal matter was visible in the sewage and there was faecal matter around the working area.”

 

Everyone’s got a camera: Restaurants in China edition

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Workers at two popular restaurant chains in China have been caught on undercover video reusing leftover food scraps and handling meals with filthy hands, according to a report.

Man Ling restaurant, which has 1,000-plus locations throughout China and markets itself as “healthy,” issued an apology to the public after the scandalous video emerged. 

Joshua Rhett Miller of the New York Post reported employees were filmed using leftover food to cook congee – a classic Chinese rice porridge – as well as other revolting practices, the South China Morning Post reported Wednesday. They were also nabbed placing their unwashed hands on the grub. 

One employee even pulled out pork ribs from a pot of leftover soup and used them to cook Chinese yam and meat congee for other diners, according to the report.

“Yeah, it’s leftover,” a Man Ling worker told the undercover reporter from Fujian Television when asked if there was any food safety issue. 

“It’s OK to cook again.”

Man Ling, renowned for its cut-price offerings, sells more than 180 million bowls of congee each year, according to one food ordering data analysis app. 

Its store in Fuzhou, in southeastern China, was shut down earlier this week following the scandal, and the chain apologized Monday for “disappointing” its customers, according to the South China Morning Post.

Models for efficacy of restaurant inspections

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Restaurant health inspections aim at identifying health violations and shall reduce the risk that restaurant visitors suffer from foodborne illness. Nevertheless, regulatory authorities’ resources are limited, so an efficient mechanism that supports scheduling of health inspections is necessary.

We build upon information efficiency theory and investigate whether information extracted from online review platforms is useful to predict restaurant health violations. Furthermore, we examine how the expectation disconfirmation bias impacts classification performance. Analyzing a large sample of health inspections, corresponding online reviews and restaurant visitor data, we propose and evaluate different predictive models.

We find that classifiers specifically taking into account information from online review platforms outperform different baseline approaches. We thus show that online reviews encompass private information indicating strong information efficiency. Furthermore, we observe that the expectation disconfirmation bias has an influence on classification performance in case of restaurants with a low star rating and with a poor inspection history. An ensemble classifier can help to mitigate this influence. Thus, online review platforms contain relevant information to predict future health violations. Our results are highly relevant for regulatory authorities, restaurant visitors and restaurant owners.

Leveraging online review platforms to support public policy; Predicting restaurant health violations based on online reviews

Decision Support Systems

Michael Siering

ttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2020.113474

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167923620302293

Disgusting face, disease-ridden place? Emoji influence on the interpretation of restaurant inspection reports

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Every year, millions of Americans get sick from foodborne illness and it is estimated half of all reported instances occur at restaurants. To protect the public, regulators are encouraged to conduct restaurant inspections and disclose reports to consumers. However, inspection reporting format is inconsistent and typically contains information unclear to most consumers who often misinterpret the inspection results. Additionally, consumers are increasingly searching for this information in a digital context. Limited research explores inspection reports as communication tools.

Using affect-as-information and ELM as theoretical frameworks, this experiment investigated how discrete emotions (e.g., disgust) conveyed through pictorial cues (i.e., emojis) influenced consumers’ processing of inspection reports. Participants, recruited from Amazon’s MTurk, were randomly assigned to one of six experimental conditions in a 3 (emoji: smiling vs. disgusted vs. none) x 2 (violation level: low vs. high) between-subjects design. Then, participants completed a questionnaire regarding perceptions and cognitive processing of the message.

Results revealed that, compared to text, disgusted face emoji increased risk perceptions and avoidance behavior. In terms of emotion, smiling face emoji motivated participants to feel more emotions related to sanitation. In turn, positive feelings decreased elaboration likelihood. As predicted by ELM, involvement also predicted elaboration, such that participants who were highly involved with inspection reports elaborated more than those less involved. Involvement also moderated the relationship between emoji presented and elaboration. Practical implications are also discussed.

Disgusting face, disease-ridden place?: Emoji influence on the interpretation of restaurant inspection reports

Health Communication, 18 August 2020

Elizabeth Ray and Patrick Merle

https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2020.1802867

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10410236.2020.1802867

Three sushi restaurants closed after Food Safety Authority discover they were being run from the bedroom of a house

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Another reason not to like sushi

Eoghan Moloney of the Independent writes three unregistered online sushi restaurants were ordered to close by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) after it was found they were being run from a bedroom of a house in Dublin.

Koi Sushi, Nagoya Sushi and Kyoto Sushi takeaway restaurants were all registered to the same address of a house in the Santry area of Dublin and were ordered to close after the FSAI found them in breach of numerous laws around food and food safety.

Dr Pamela Byrne, Chief Executive, FSAI expressed particular concern at the conditions in which the high-risk sushi products were being stored in.

Dr Byrne said the conditions in which the Sushi restaurants were operating in “posed a grave and immediate danger” to consumer health.

“Running a food business that has not been registered and is therefore, not supervised is totally unacceptable and poses a very serious risk to consumers’ health.

“In these instances, the unregistered businesses were producing sushi without any hygiene or temperature controls. Sushi is a very high-risk product because it contains raw fish which must be kept chilled to reduce the growth of dangerous bacteria. It can also contain cooked rice, which is a ready-to-eat product that must be kept chilled.

“In these instances, the absence of a food safety management system, no monitoring of the cold chain and no evidence of traceability of raw ingredients posed a grave and immediate danger to consumer health,” Dr Byrne said.

The FSAI closure orders on the premises detail how food was being produced, processed and distributed in an unsatisfactory and unclean environment.

There was an absence of safe practice when handling raw fish and cooked rice, it says, with the enforcement order noting a lack of access to hand washing facilities in the ‘food prep’ area. There was also no access to hot water, which posed “a serious risk to public health.”