More than 70 percent of restaurant inspections result in at least one “critical” public health violation, requiring a follow-up inspection.Many people know that the El Paso County Department of Health and Environment inspects restaurants, grocery stores, delis and other retail food establishments. But do you know why? We inspect restaurants because one of our missions is to protect you and your family from food-borne illness.The goal of the Health Department is to conduct two unannounced inspections of every retail food establishment – ranging from fine-dining restaurants to hot-dog stands – per year. In enforcing the Colorado state regulations, our Health Department inspectors are looking for food storage, handling, preparation and serving practices that could cause outbreaks of food-borne illness such as Salmonella and E. coli. Most food-borne illnesses are caused by bacteria or viruses that can be present in raw food but are killed by proper cooking methods.A majority of food-borne illnesses are due to five factors:
- Improper food cooling for storage
- Too long of time lapse between food preparation and serving
- The presence of a person who is ill, such as a cook or prep cook, or poor personal hygiene, such as poor hand-washing
- Inadequate reheating of food before serving
- Improper holding temperatures of hot foods before serving
These are the same things that could go wrong in your kitchen at home, yet the potential in a public setting to make a large number of people sick is much greater.How sick? Food-borne illness can cause vomiting and diarrhea, and in rare cases, death. In fact, 76 million people are estimated to have contracted food-borne illnesses every year in the United States; 235,000 needed hospitalization and 5,000 people have died from food-borne illness.In El Paso County, the number of food safety-related complaints about restaurants is rising – from 60 in 2005 to 219 in 2007 – and the Health Department received 150 additional complaints in 2007 from people who felt they got sick from eating at a restaurant. While the Health Department can’t connect a lack of inspections to specific illnesses, these numbers are cause for concern.There is value in educating food service workers and enforcing public health codes. During an inspection, a violation can be determined to be critical, requiring immediate correction while the inspector is present; or non-critical, usually related to equipment maintenance or general facility cleanliness. Just one critical violation causes a business to receive an unsatisfactory review and triggers a follow-up inspection if the problem isn’t corrected on the spot.The state of Colorado requires the Health Department to conduct two routine inspections of food establishments per year. Yet in 2007, our Health Department conducted less than half of the state-required routine inspections because we employ the equivalent of only eight full-time inspectors. The federal government recommends 15 to 16 inspectors.To hire more food inspectors to meet the restaurant inspection requirements, the Health Department would have to cut back on other critical functions. Other health issues can drain the resources of the Health Department such as the especially bad year for influenza in 2003 and a couple of large tuberculosis investigations in 2006 and 2007.In the months ahead, I will tell you about other essential Health Department responsibilities. The Health Department is committed to promoting and protecting public health and environmental quality in our community.(This could be a sidebar or running text at the end of the story)When dining out, here’s what you can do to help protect yourself:
- Order your meat and poultry cooked well done, and send it back if it’s pink.
- Discard “doggie bags” if left out more than two hours, and be sure to reheat thoroughly before eating. Eat within three days, or toss out.
- Share your concerns with the proprietor if you see food-handling techniques that concern you.
- To communicate a concern about food-safety practices at a restaurant or food service establishment, call the Health Department at (719) 575-8636 or visit www.elpasocountyhealth.org to make a complaint online.
