Food Inspection/Food Production Options

Abstract

(August 2000 for Region of Ottawa-Carleton Health Department)

A worldwide survey was carried out over June and July 2000 of 79 senior health jurisdictions responsible for restaurant inspections.  This broad survey indicated that, apart from the Republic of Singapore, only the United States had disclosure systems or posted letter grade systems to make public the inspection status of the restaurant.  Canada had no history of public grading, but as of August 2000 two systems were planned for the City of Toronto and York Region in Ontario for 2001.  The Region of Ottawa-Carleton Health Department was exploring a number of options respecting restaurant inspection information.

Many of the letter grade systems in the United States originated with the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) Model Food Code of 1934 which had, in turn, been adapted from the original 1924 USPHS Model Milk Code wherein the concept of letter grades (“A”,” B”, etc.) had been introduced to classify milk in the United States.  No preliminary study a propos the effectiveness of such letter grading appears to have been undertaken respecting restaurants, nor was there any indication that letter grading had been evaluated by the USPHS or any client state health agency at any time after its introduction in 1934. The 1962 Model Code was the last one that made any mention of letter grades as an optional system.

The use of letter grades is in flux at present, largely because of the Food and Drug Administration’s Model Codes for retail food since 1993.  Subsequent Model Codes stress a risk assessment/management system of food handling known as hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP).  Many agencies that once had letter grades have dropped the concept over the years, while a limited number of others have initiated such systems, frequently upon the demand of their political representatives in response to media requests for such information.

The systems of disclosure and letter grading in use varied greatly and have recently included the use of internet websites to make public restaurant inspection information.  The website Internet designs and purposes ranged widely from being punitive in intent, obviously attempting to adversely impact the economical viability of non-compliant operators to being supportive and informative, with both the industry and the public at large seen as clients to the service.  The use of websites is changing the nature of disclosure, and careful policy considerations would appear in order to make this new disclosure element achieve whatever purposes it was intended to accomplish.

With the exception of one letter grade system implemented in the early 1990s in Florida, this survey could ascertain no internal evaluation for any of the systems nor was any evaluation planned.  No publication to peer-reviewed journals was recorded from those officials interviewed, explaining the paucity of program accounts respecting the public health effectiveness of disclosure or grading systems in the literature.  During the survey, each of the agencies with disclosure or letter grade systems was asked for public health outcomes from their particular system which they would not have achieved with traditional non-disclosure inspection programming.  With the one exception noted above, no agency or official made such a public health outcome attribution for their disclosure/grading system.
 
 
 

Full Report available upon request.  Send email to above link for rhb@rhbconsulting.com