Food safety system works
Published Monday March 2nd, 2009
One year after government started posting restaurant inspections online, compliance has improved
One year after the health department started posting inspection reports on its website for everyone to see, officials have seen a definite increase in compliance by restaurants who want to make a good impression.
"Compliance has gone up and if our inspectors find something, the restaurants want to hurry up and comply. If we give them five days to fix something, they usually say they'll have it done in two days and want us to come back for the re-inspection," says Nina van der Pluijm, regional director for health protection programs for the New Brunswick Department of Health.
"The public likes to know what is going on and be able to read a report on a certain restaurant, see the ranking and be able to see what they did to get that ranking."
The health department first started posting restaurant health inspection results online back in July of 2007, but the idea drew criticism from the industry because it was a colour-coded system and didn't really explain to people why a particular restaurant got a green (which is good) or a red (which is very bad). The system was updated in December of 2007 when the department started posting copies of the actual inspection reports, complete with checklists and handwritten comments from the health inspectors. So, for the last year, restaurant owners and customers are able to log onto the health department website and see the actual reports for hundreds of restaurants, from A&W to Zellers. The Food Service Establishment Inspection Results cover restaurants, take-outs, school cafeterias, bakeries, convenience stores, pizza shops, arena canteens, coffee shops, beverage rooms and any other place with a licence to prepare and sell food.
van der Pluijm says establishments are inspected every one to three years depending on their risk category and the inspectors always show up unannounced. The inspectors carry a checklist that includes food storage, food preparation, food display, equipment and utensils, employees, cleaning and sanitation, the general cleanliness and upkeep of the building, water supply, lighting and ventilation. Restaurants can be marked as satisfactory, unsatisfactory, minor infraction, major infraction and critical infraction. Their final grades are colour coded as green, yellow, dark yellow, red with warning stripes and critical red, which means a shutdown.
A check through the list as it was posted yesterday showed the vast majority of restaurants in New Brunswick have green rankings, with only a few yellow warnings.
Over the last year, a few restaurants in Metro Moncton and elsewhere have been closed temporarily as a result of failing grades. The Egg Roll King in Riverview for example was closed for a short time but it was able to fix the problems and everything was found satisfactory during a reinspection on Jan. 19.
van der Pluijm says the program has gotten good feedback from the public and the food service industry, though some restaurant owners have complained the standards are too tough.
One restaurant owner, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the industry generally likes the idea because it keeps them on their toes. He said franchise restaurants are also inspected regularly by their own regional offices. But while restaurants know food handling and cleanliness rules, they can't help being a little messy sometimes.
"The time of day that they do the inspection can affect their rating," he said. "If they show up in the middle of a busy lunch time rush when you are short-staffed, there's bound to be a bit of chaos going on and the state of the kitchen doesn't represent what it looks like most of the time. They can give someone a report based on the time of day they did the inspection and they're not getting a real read on the situation."
Luc Erjavec, a spokesman for the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association in Halifax, says the fact that there is a high rate of compliance and few infractions is proof that restaurant owners put food safety at the top of their priority list.
"The levels of infractions are very minor and the incidents of food-borne illnesses in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, along with all this disclosure, show there is no smoking gun and the industry is doing a pretty good job at food safety on a day-to-day basis."
However, he said the industry generally doesn't like the colour-coding system because the general public might not try to understand it.
"They might look and see a yellow and move on without taking the time to see why, and the reports could give a restaurant a bad name for a relatively minor incident."
Erjavec said the restaurant industry wants to maintain a good relationship with the inspectors because reputation is an important factor in any business. The restaurant association does not have an office in New Brunswick, but the Nova Scotia office does represent New Brunswick operators.
van der Pluijm said inspectors are more concerned with safe food handling and preparation, food storage, thawing of frozen meats and other practices that pose the most risk to customers. Moving, thawing, cooling and re-heating of foods can lead to cross-contamination and the spread of bacteria if not done properly.
"The things that can cause bacteria to spread and cause people to get sick are the priority."
Inspectors check the little thermometers in food trays to make sure they are being kept at the right temperatures. They also check to make sure things like flour, sugar and salt are kept in the right type of storage conditions, whether the refrigerators are working properly and that the floors and walls are in good condition. Other items that show up on reports are the cleanliness of washrooms, proper cleaning of utensils and the staff's knowledge of proper procedures.
Duncan Hutchison, instructor with the cook training program at NBCC Moncton, said his students are taught proper food handling techniques. He said he supports the online posting of restaurant rankings as long as people are aware of what the colour codings actually mean.
He said the good thing about all this is that the department has put on more inspectors and they are getting around to more places more often.
"If they (restaurant owners) don't see the inspector for a while, they forget. So if they are seeing them more often, they try to be ready."
Hutchison said restaurants used to use a lot more fresh products in the past but have moved to using more frozen items. This means there is more defrosting going on in kitchens and student cooks need to learn the proper methods of thawing before cooking. Health inspectors say frozen items should not be thawed at room temperature. With so many changes in the business and health regulations getting stiffer, he says a real cook's course has become more of an asset for people looking for work in what seems to be a growing restaurant market. Restaurants are required to have people on duty who have approved health department food safety courses.
"Right now, we have more businesses looking than we have students to put out there."
van der Pluijm says inspectors need to be tough sometimes, but believes it is better for restaurants to be prepared than risk a bad grade which can hurt their business and reputation. At the same time, the department wants to make sure all of New Brunswick's food establishments are safe for customers and visitors.
"It's very rewarding knowing you have an affect on the front lines of health care."
Inspectors document everything they find so they can gauge a restaurant's performance over time, but people visiting the website can only see the most recent report.
She said the department is looking into posting previous reports as well, but that will take time and some IT solutions before it can work.
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