Marin County Restaurants- Safe and Healthy?

How often have you eaten in a restaurant, and wondered if you were getting a 'little something extra' with the order?  We wondered too, and decided to take a trip down to the Environmental Health Services department at the Marin Civic Center, to see for ourselves. 

We are knee-deep in manila folders in a conference room at the Marin Civic Center.  And what we find inside the folders, isn't very appetizing. 

When the Marin IJ recently posted an article on several Marin eateries with repeat health violations they were deluged with comments from readers.  But a companion piece, published on the same day, really grabbed our attention. Currently, Marin is the only county in the Bay Area that does not post their inspections online for the restaurant-going public.  Many large cities and counties nationwide, post their inspections on the web, but Marin- which has been promising since 2005 to make them available online- still does not.  Just two weeks ago, the County announced they would have a rudimentary web version by Fall 2008.

Then we had an idea- why not post inspections on our website, ourselves? 

Because health inspections are public record, we request to see the files on the 284 restaurants we have listed on this website. Supervising Engineer, David Smail in Environment Health Services, at the Civic Center, agrees to answers some questions before we begin to examine the huge stacks of manila folders they've retrieved for us.

David's group, is tasked with the job of inspecting all 1,451 facilities that serve or sell food in the county; everything from school and prison cafeterias, to restaurants, to grocery stores. These routine inspections are supposed to occur about once every six months. Not only does his department cover food safety, they also inspect pools, spas and rental housing.  That's a lot of inspecting for a department with only one  supervisor and five full-time district inspectors.  We ask him to describe a typical restaurant inspection-

"The inspector will inspect for critical items first. Those include adequate cooking (rapid reheat, rapid cooling), adequate refrigeration, hand washing/employee hygiene and vermin issues.  Then we'll move on to structural considerations like floors, walls, ceilings and premises, and then food storage."

Inspectors bring a flashlight, thermometer and sanitizing equipment into the facility to perform the necessary inspections and tests.  The visits are usually unannounced, but some would be scheduled ahead of time; a change of ownership for example, or possibly after a consumer complaint. In the inspection process, there are critical violations and non-critical violations or retail practice issues (personal cleanliness, condition of equipment, cleanliness of non-food areas etc)  Critical violations, the really serious issues that require reinspections, are further divided into major or minor depending on the severity.  Certain major critical violations, live roach infestation for instance, are grounds for immediate closure until remedied.  If the restaurant receives a major violation that doesn't pose an "imminent public health hazard" will the restaurant be allowed to remain open? Mr. Smail-

"Yes, unless there are serious health issues, for example the facility has a serious pest problem, or there is no alternate refrigeration or there is a surfacing sewage condition, grease trap or other back flow issue.  We've closed facilities due to grossly unsanitary conditions on a number of occasions."

Some of the files we're reading may not quite fall into that category, but they come pretty close.  One Stinson Beach restaurant has six critical violations, three of them major.  In addition, they have a whopping 12 retail practice issues, although it's comforting to note that they only needed one reinspection to correct everything.  More scary, are places like the one in Sausalito that required five reinspections to correct their critical violations (6) and retail practice issues (12).  More typical, are establishments that have a couple of critical violations and three or four retail practice issues, and require one reinspection to comply.

We ask David how many times a restaurant might be reinspected for the same uncorrected major critical violation-

"Minor or retail practice violations should not be reinspected over and over.  Major violations need to be corrected through closure, or within a reasonable time frame as established by the inspector."

A consumer complaint from one individual, will warrant immediate inspection, unless the facility has been inspected within the last six months.  If two or more unrelated patrons become ill, Smail says they will inspect the same day regardless of the date of the most recent routine inspection.

According to the Marin IJ, food-related complaints were down in 2007, but the number of establishments needing numerous reinspections to reach compliance increased.

The issue of timeliness seems to be real problem for county health inspectors.  Over and over again, we find restaurants that have not been inspected for more than six months, many in over a year.  We even find a handful that had their last routine inspection in 2006, more than two years ago! Just to confirm our information is correct, we decide to visit a few of those establishments. 

Two of the three restaurant owners are very pleasant and agree to provide the inspection to us, but for whatever reason, they can't locate their copies. The third place, a San Anselmo eatery which received high marks recently in an IJ review, is considered to be one of the finer restaurants in Marin.  The owner, however, is angry that we would even want to see the inspection.  He insists he does not have to show it to us, unless we are customers. In fact, state law mandates that the most recent routine inspection report be made available for review by any  interested party. He accuses us of setting out to destroy restaurants for our own gain, or words to that effect.  His kitchen is clean, he doesn't have time to go look for it, the IJ already did this story.  His rant goes on in this vein for a full ten minutes before he relents and shows us a copy.  The date is indeed 5/20/06.

Finally, we ask David if the County of Marin is considering a rating system, where restaurants would be assigned an alpha or numerical rating, that would be posted in restaurants, like in Los Angeles county-

"We are not currently planning on a letter grade system, but hope to initiate an "Award of Excellence" that will be based on a rating or tabulating of data from the new software in conjunction with the web disclosure of inspection results.  Approximately ten jurisdictions out of 62 in the state currently use the grading system.  There are some advantages to grading and some drawbacks too.  We will reevaluate the situation as we gain operational experience with the new system."

In all, we make five separate visits to the Civic Center in order to review all the files.  It is a tedious process.  The inspection reports are all handwritten.  Some files have older versions of the forms.  We still have not seen inspections for all 284 restaurants we've requested, because some files are out with the inspectors and some restaurants- undergoing a remodel or change of ownership- have not been fully inspected.  David Smail's group has been exceptionally accommodating; retrieving files, answering our questions and emails, always friendly.  We never encountered any resistance on their part for our online project, even though they plan to have the county version online in the next few months.   Their plans to make inspections available on the web, will likely modernize the inspection process itself, resulting in a more streamlined and timely operation.  And that is good news for everyone.

Some statistics:

**241 restaurant inspections were reviewed.
**65%  of restaurants were out of compliance for hot and cold holding temperatures, the code found with the highest number of critical violations.
**Second highest code violation was food contact surfaces: clean and sanitized.  Over half, 57%, were found in violation.
**One third, 31% did not have adequate handwashing facilities supplied or accessible to employees.
**11% of restaurants had no critical violations; of this figure, 9% still had non-critical or business practice issues.
**Only 2% were perfectly clean; no critical violations or retail practice issues.
**Of the restaurants we looked at, 50% had three or more critical violations, and 50% have two or less.

Comments

[Betsy Daly]

Great work! Thank you so much for getting this vital information out to the public. I was one of the people deeply impacted by unbelievably poor restaurant health practices when I was infected with Campylobacter in 2005 (while 7 months pregnant). My husband and 10 other people were also infected and it can cause long term health consequences. Restaurant safety is a serious issue that affects all of us in Marin and I applaud the MoreMarin.com team for taking it on when no one else would.

Thank you!
Betsy Daly, Tiburon

[Alex Anteros]

I think your Restaurant Health Inspection information is extremely misleading without knowing the context for which people are cited. Marin has one of the best health inspection programs in the Country. That means that our standards are very high.

Having worked as a health inspector you are only presenting the kernel of the truth when you post these reports. You should have posted the follow up reports that clear the restaurants for the citings.

The normal process is that a restaurant is cited. It has 7 days until the inspector returns, to fix the problems. If they are not fixed they are in violation. That is what you should be reporting on. Taken out of context every restaurant in Marin is in some sort of violation.

I think it is irresponsible of your blog to not post the full story and the followup inspections. Your blog should become more media savvy. To only report on one side of the story puts you in the same class as the mainstream media. Your spewing information without doing your homework. Shame on you.

Posted by: Alex Anteros | Thursday, June 05, 2008 at 12:57 PM

[Bill of MoreMarin]

Alex,
Thank you for your comment. We appreciate what you have to say. We agree that the standards are high in the county and that causes a large number of violations.

We would have liked to include re-inspections but they are in narrative form. It is impossible to uniquely map what is in the re-inspection report to the original inspection form. Therefore, we can't tell for sure what violations have been corrected.

As for the 7 days, the schedule of the re-inspection is up to the inspector. Very often the re-inspection didn't happen. This means that if we included re-inspections it would be unfair to restaurants that have a rescheduled re-inspection but the inspector never showed up.

We disagree your statement that what we report is misleading. Most of these restaurants had been inspected within a year before the inspections we report. If in six months to a year, a restaurant went from clean to 6 violations, I want to know that.

Because of your concern and that of some others we have posted a more detailed explanation of why we do what we do.

http://home.moremarin.com/HealthInsp/Why.htm

So, in fact we report the entire story as is available from the county today. If the county uses the same form for re-inspections as inspections it will make it easier to include.

While what we report is not perfect, we disagree that there should be nothing until the county has all the information you suggest. It is not likely that they will for at least a year. Marin is the only county in the Bay Area that has essentially no information available. What we report is much, much better than reporting nothing.

[EMK]

Long overdue! Thanks for doing what the County of Marin MUST do at tax payer cost, not by relying on private web sites, such as what you've endeavored using your private funds to post public findings. It is THEIR responsibility to post these inspections, and why they've hesitated is a major disservice to the tax payers and diners of Marin, not to mention the public health issues involved.

I was the victim of severe food poisoning 2 years ago after eating shell fish at a Novato restaurant, symptoms which lasted for 5 agonizing days. After 3 days, I was able to pick up the phone to report the occurrence to the County. An Inspector was immediately dispatched to the location and the restaurant underwent an inspection that revealed the probable cause of my unfortunate infection. They were also found to have 2 other major violations. Since that time, I've become an overly cautious and picky diner, observing a restaurant for more than its culinary offerings, such as the health of the server, the busboy, bathroom cleanliness and sneaking peeks into kitchens if possible. My point is that now with the availability of these inspections on the web via your site, it will be much easier to discern and choose which restaurant is the better choice for a safer dining experience.

Your work with these Inspection postings should be recognized by all tax payers, diners and advocates of public health in Marin, and I thank you for your hard work.