Health Department Scrutinizes Restaurants’ Offering

 

The first things April Jones does when entering a restaurant kitchen are put on a hairnet and wash her hands.

“I want to send a message of personal hygiene,” the environmental health specialist said as she scrubbed up in the kitchen hand-washing sink at Bobby’s Country Cookin’ in west Little Rock. As one of the inspectors charged with spot-checking Pulaski County’s 1,800 food service establishments, Jones carries with her a pair of thermometers, a metal clipboard and the power to cite an establishment for violations large and small.

If that happens, though, the Arkansas Department of Health, under which each county health unit operates, seeks to remedy the violations swiftly, discreetly and with a respect for the restaurant’s business that makes health inspections largely invisible in the state. There are no letter grades posted on restaurant walls, no percentage scores to announce an establishments’ supposed safety rating. Health officials follow up on any complaints the department receives – anything from a hair or Band-Aid in a dish to cases of suspected food poisoning – but did not, in 2009, confirm a single instance of food-borne illness (defined as two or more illnesses from the same source) from a restaurant anywhere in the state.

Department officials credit that success to a willingness to work with, rather than against, restaurateurs. The Health Department’s prime goals, said spokesman Ed Barham, are to “protect the public health and stay out of the way of business being done.”

Jones recently guided an Arkansas Business reporter and photographer through Bobby’s on a mock inspection. The visit wasn’t a surprise to the restaurant; true inspections, which occur at least twice annually, are unannounced. “We’re not trying to ambush anybody, but the rules as they are, it doesn’t do anybody any good for her to say, ‘I’ll be there Thursday,'” Barham said. “We like to work with the owner. This is a snapshot of any one time.”

The kitchen at Bobby’s is immaculate on this visit. But this quick tour is a glimpse at what the state’s 14,000 permit-holding restaurants, delis, bars and cafeterias undergo. And that figure doesn’t count schools, which the state’s local health sanitarians also inspect. The state pays roughly $3 million a year in salary and travel expenses for the 100 sanitarians who perform food safety inspections – only a quarter of whom do so exclusive of other environmental inspections such as septic systems and public swimming pools.

Jones’ checklist of potential violations is a real appetite-suppressant. The health department looks for “proper eating, tasting, drinking or tobacco use,” “no discharge from eyes, nose, and mouth” and the evocatively understated “personal cleanliness.”

On her round at Bobby’s, Jones put a thermometer in the Mexican chicken casserole, looked for potential for cross-contamination in the refrigerator and examined the inside of the icemaker for pink or black slime – evidence of mold. As she waited for a chemical dishwasher run to finish, to check the chlorine levels in the water, she mentioned that she was eyeing the floors, as well.

“I’m looking for evidence of rodents and mice – critters in the building,” she said.

Owner Terry Matyskiela said afterward that he appreciated Jones’ approach.

“If you’re doing something wrong, then let’s be upfront about it and fix it,” he said. “I think everything has gotten more politically correct. It’s not the hard-nose days of 30 years ago.”

 

No ‘Police Mentality’

Funny that he chooses that figure, because that’s how long Raymond Heaggans, the regional food specialist at the Arkansas Department of Health, has been in the business, too.

Heaggans said he’s seen the culture of health inspections change from confrontational to cooperative, and, he believes, for the better.

“It was more of a police mentality in those years,” Heaggans said. “We going in was more like, ‘I gotcha.’ Violations still kept occurring, and one of the things we found out was missing, was training.”

Today, a restaurant owner found in violation of a code will be encouraged to change certain practices on the spot – if employees are eating and drinking in the food-preparation area, for example. Other fixes (replacing an insufficiently cold freezer, perhaps) might take a few days, in which case the restaurant will be asked to voluntarily dispose of the affected foods in the meantime.

Those have always been easy violations to record, Heaggans said, but now he encourages inspectors to watch kitchen workers for several minutes to monitor their hand-washing habits – frequency, duration (at least 20 seconds with soap and hot water) and drying (on paper towels instead of aprons or jeans).

“Back in those days, we said, is the floor clean, are the shelves clean, the bathroom, the can opener. But those things didn’t contribute to food-borne illnesses,” Heaggans said.

While general cleanliness was a crude indicator of a safe kitchen, grime doesn’t pose anything like the threat of bacteria under a line cook’s fingernails.

“If I could cut down on hand contamination,” Heaggans said, “I could cut down on food-borne contamination by 50 percent tomorrow.”

The shift in inspectors’ focus has come as recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control have become more focused on how salmonella, E. coli and staphylococcus are transmitted. The National Restaurant Association, the industry lobbying and promotion group, provides a training program called ServSafe to the Health Department, which offers it as part of manager certification at its Little Rock headquarters.

The department aims to be the source of best-practices education, especially for independent restaurants that don’t have the benefit of a large company’s training.

“If they haven’t been trained in hand washing, then it’s not happening, probably,” Heaggans said. “We’ve got a lot of corporations, big chains, that are very conscientious. It’s their bible.”

Overwhelmingly the impression among department officials is that restaurateurs want to follow the regulations, to avoid shutdowns and damning word-of-mouth.

“Everybody wants to do the right thing,” said David Cowan, who as one of four inspectors in Washington County is responsible for checking 260 different facilities. “The illness factor – they don’t want people sick any more than we do.

“If the owner is at the establishment, they have the most to lose. It’s their liability. It’s usually a good rapport. They like to see us. I’ve had a couple of owners, they’re glad we’re there so they can reiterate what they’re telling their employees. It seems like it has to come from the Health Department for them to actually get it.”

 

Education Is Key

The biggest hurdle to keeping a kitchen running safely, often, is education. Heaggans recalled the instance some years ago of the manager who, per the regulations, kept a thermometer handy for testing the temperatures of his hot foods. But he explained that every time he checked those dishes, the thermometer melted.

“Come to find out, he was sticking it in there with the cover on it,” Heaggans said. “In this business, we don’t assume that people know anything.”

The department is big on labeling. Chemicals have to be labeled, including their concentration; foods not stored in their original containers have to labeled, as well – hence the clearly marked bins “FLOUR” and “SUGAR” on a rack at Bobby’s.

Sauces on buffet lines are another that need labeling, mostly to keep customers safe from browsers who might dunk a test finger into an open container of dressing to determine whether it’s ranch or blue cheese.

“A customer that comes in with hepatitis A at infection stage can contaminate a lot of people at an all-you-can-eat,” Heaggans said. “Children, bless their hearts, will stick their heads under that sneeze shield.”

It’s that sort of unsettling thought that can fall under the heading of too much information, or just enough. Health inspectors tend to be loathe to criticize restaurants by name, in part because of the repercussions to business, and in part because they see so many, and for only a short moment. But they still like to read published round-ups of violations. Who doesn’t like to know, as Northwest Arkansas papers reported late last year, that the soda dispenser at a White Oak Station had mold growing on it, or that a KFC had some foods stored at 57 degrees because a refrigerator had accidentally been unplugged?

“Some of the establishments like it because they can look at those reports, and look at their establishments and compare,” Cowan said. “And they enjoy it because they eat out, as well.”

When Cowan does go out for a meal, the 12-year veteran inspector finds it difficult to stop inspecting long enough to enjoy his food.

“It’s hard to turn the eye off,” Cowan said. “Maybe that’s why I don’t face the kitchen.”