Mandatory Classes Weighed for Restaurant Workers

For now, Long Beach restaurants will not be required to post health inspection grades in their front windows showing how they ranked after their kitchens were examined.

Instead, the city’s health department is leaning toward setting up mandatory food handling classes for all restaurant kitchen workers rather than issue grades that range from A for good to C for bad.

In January, the county Health Services Department began a new system of issuing grades to restaurants in unincorporated county areas and asked cities to adopt their own ordinances requiring that the grades be posted.

Diana Bonta, director of Long Beach’s Health and Human Services Department, said the grading system has not been rejected yet. Instead it is being evaluated.

Any changes in the health inspection system would have to be approved by the City Council.