Restaurant inspections coming to county's Web site

By: GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer | Friday, July 27, 2007 11:32 PM PDT ∞

SAN DIEGO ---- County health officials said last week that by September, local residents will be able, with the click of a mouse, to look up health inspection information about their favorite places to eat.

Liz Pozzebon, chief of the county's food and housing division, said that people won't be able to review all of a restaurant's health inspection online.

But she said they would be able to see what letter grade ---- A, B, or C ---- that each eatery had been given and a list of any major violations that inspectors had cited.

That would include such things as storing perishable food at room temperature, having rodents or cockroaches, or using food handlers who were sneezing, coughing, or had runny noses.

Officials said the plan to create a Web site for people to look up the records grew out of the county's long-running transfer of handwritten, paper inspection reports to an electronic system and database.

Pozzebon said the switch, which was started in 2003 and picked up steam in 2005, has made it easier for health officials to track restaurants to see if they had continuing histories of violations and problems.

She and other county officials say the database, combined with a review of the system, have made the system better.

Her comments came in part in response to recent questions about whether the letter grades are reliable.

Pozzebon and others said the main job of health inspectors is to prevent unsafe practices that could make customers sick, she said. The number of complaints reported by doctors of the two most common food-borne illnesses ---- salmonella and campylobacter, a bacteria that can cause digestive illness ---- have decreased over the last four years, she said.

The number of reported salmonella cases has decreased from 51 in 2003 to 24 in 2006, according to the county, and the number of campylobacter cases had dropped from 44 in 2003 to 13 in 2006.

The county's program also received a prestigious consumer protection award in 2005, the "Samuel J. Crumbine" award, given annually by a food packaging trade organization.

Pozzebon said that an inspector could find major violations that would not lower a restaurant's grade. But that would only happen if the violations were fixed before the end of the inspector's examination and did not reduce the restaurant's overall score below the level it needed to keep an "A" rating.

An "A" grade means that the restaurant has scored between 90 and 100 points in a 100-point inspection of more than 47 categories that focus on the potential for transmitting food-borne illness in five areas: foods kept at improper temperatures; cleanliness; undercooking; contaminated equipment; and food from unsafe sources.

County officials said there is a difference between major violations revolving around general sanitation regulations and conditions that pose imminent public health threats that would shut a restaurant down.

"An imminent health risk," Pozzebon said, "is a risk so serious that the facility needs to be closed because it's a danger to the public. For example, if there is a sewage backup into the facility, or if there is no hot water, no power, or if there's a disease transmission linked to the facility.

"In that case, the facility would be closed on the spot," she said. "We would remove the grade card and put up a closure notice, 'closed by order of the health department,' that contained reasons for the closure."

County officials said that county inspectors handed out 23,940 "A" grades, 362 "B" grades, and 27 "C" grades in 2006. One hundred and nine facilities ---- restaurants, coffee shops, markets and delicatessens ---- were closed by the county in 2006. An additional 11 were closed because of fires.

Meanwhile, Pozzebon said that county officials hope that the public will have a better chance to acquaint themselves with the inspection system in September when they put the database up for people to see.

"It's going to be posting information ... about our grading system, how our inspections are conducted, what major violations are, and what we do about them," she said. "And it means if you want to search for a particular food facility, there will be different ways to search and see what their score was. We're just trying to provide more information to the public."

Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com.

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