Too Many Cooks Are Spoiling the Broth

You’re ensconced in a beautifully designed restaurant. The table setting gleams, moonlight dances on the harbor outside your window, your host and server are dressed to spell class. And the food, exquisite. A perfect evening of dining pleasure.

So how come you started feeling sick afterward?

Because no matter how splendid the environment, even with the restaurant’s kitchen spanking clean, you can suffer an eating illness if its management doesn’t operate a regular food-safety system.

But now California lawmakers are attempting to reduce such problems. By the end of this year, every restaurant in California will be required to have at least one employee certified as trained in food safety. The idea is that the message will then spread throughout the kitchen.

Don’t they already know that stuff, you might be asking?

Not always, it turns out. The American Food Safety Institute, which provides such training classes throughout California, estimates nearly half the 140,000 eating establishments in the state have no one with current training in food safety. And about 70% tested before such classes don’t pass.

State health officials agree the need is great.

“I’ve had veteran chefs say they learned [in a safety course] about things they’d been doing wrong for years,” said Jeff Lineberry, spokesman for the food and drug branch of the state Department of Health Services.

True, in Orange County health officials conduct regular restaurant inspections to examine for both cleanliness and safe practices. The experts say the inspections help but can’t assure ongoing safe practices.

“Food safety is so easy, and yet so hard,” said David Nash, who is executive director of the American Food Institute.

Easy, because cleanliness in food preparation amounts to following a few basics, mainly related to temperature control for food, watching out for cross-contamination and getting employees to constantly wash with soap and water--any time they change tasks.

Hard, because it takes tremendous discipline to get a staff to follow such routines daily.

For example, kitchen personnel are told never to wear their aprons into the restrooms. But if the apron hook is broken, this little safety rule falls by the wayside.

Hand washing for employees is greatly emphasized. But too often soap dispensers are allowed to go dry, so workers just splash on a little water.

“Most employees don’t even know how to wash,” said Caitlin Storhaug of the National Restaurant Assn.’s Education Foundation. “Soap and hot running water for at least 20 seconds, and up to the elbows. We always say sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice and you’ve washed long enough.”

The national restaurant group has a new way to get California restaurants to comply with the new law. Through its Safeserve program, it’s training American Red Cross instructors, who in turn are training restaurant personnel.

Those classes began in Orange County about six months ago, said Judy Iannaccone, spokeswoman for the Red Cross’ Orange County branch. They will be increasing, she said, as the state deadline approaches.

Francisco Hernandez, who teaches those Red Cross classes here, both in English and Spanish, believes the Safeserve training would be an eye-opener for the average person cooking at home.

“A lot of us fail to realize how important temperature control can be in preventing the spread of bacteria,” he said.

The federal government reports that 9,000 people died last year from food-borne illnesses. Beyond that, experts agree that at least 13 million people suffered some type of illness after eating out.

“Food-borne sickness is the most misdiagnosed and most underreported illness there is,” Nash said.

By the way, if you run a restaurant and it’s driving you crazy trying to get your employees to wash their hands often enough, Nash offers a suggestion he says has worked wonders some places: Offer lottery tickets to the next person to wash his or her hands at a random time (kept secret) during that shift.

“It might be the best $10 a day you ever spent,” Nash said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Pop Quiz: Food Safety

1. Raw meats and poultry should be stored:

A. On the bottom refrigerator shelf to avoid cross contamination.

B. In plastic wrap so that they don’t touch other foods.

C. At a temperature of 45 degrees or lower to preserve freshness.

D. Within 3 hours of receiving, to minimize contamination.

The answer is A.

2. From a sanitation perspective, which is the most dangerous to a food-service establishment? A. Bees

B. Mice

C. Fruit flies

D. Ants.

The answer is B

3. Which would be the most dangerous?

A. Ground beef stored above ready-to-eat foods in the refrigerator

B. A hair in a cup of soda

C. An ant in boiling hot soup

D. A baked potato that has mold on it.

The answer is A

4. What is a sign that a shipment of fish is of UNACCEPTABLE quality?

A. The fish is packed in crushed, self-draining ice

B. The fish eyes are sunken and cloudy

C. No fishy odor is detected

D. Fingerprint does not stay visible on the flesh

The answer is B

5. What is the minimum cooking temperature for ground turkey?

A. 130 degrees

B. 145 degrees

C. 155 degrees

D. 165 degrees

The answer is D

6. The BEST reason to air dry dishes and utensils is:

A. To avoid contaminating them with unsanitary towels

B. To give the sanitizer time to break down biofilms

C. To keep employees from touching them

D. The air acts as additional sanitizer

The answer is B

7. Which of the following is a virus?

A. Salmonella

B. Listeria monocytogenes

C. Hepatitis A

D. Ciguatera

The answer is C

8. Which of the following foods is potentially hazardous?

A. Refrigerated catsup

B. Commercial mayonnaise

C. Fresh, raw seed sprouts

D. A washed apple

The answer is C

9. Which of the following is NOT an approved thawing method?

A. Under cold, running water at 70 degrees F

B. In a refrigerator at 38 degrees F

C. In a covered, sanitary pan at 75 degrees F

D. In a microwave, then placed immediately on a stove

The answer is C

10. Listeriosis is:

A. A virus

B. A parasite

C. An infection

D. An intoxication

The answer is C

Bits and Bites

-- 9,000 food-borne-related deaths last year.

-- About 70% of restaurant employees would fail a test required for certification if they took it without training.

-- Only 54% knew to wash a cutting board with soap and water after cutting fresh meat and before preparing fresh vegetables on it.

-- One of the greatest misconceptions about beef: That if it’s OK to eat a steak medium rare, it’s ok to eat a hamburger medium rare. (In steak the worst bacteria is on the surface, killed by heat. In hamburger, the bacteria is mixed, and can thrive if undercooked.)

Tips

Four safety basics:

Clean (Wash hands and surfaces often

Separate (Don’t cross-contaminate foods)

Cook (Cook to proper temperatures)

Chill (Refrigerate promptly)

-- Washing must be with soap and warm water, up to the elbows, for a minimum of 20 seconds.

-- All restaurant customers should wash their hands before dining, also with soap and warm water, but a significant majority do not.

Source: American Food Safety Institute, International Food Safety Council, National Restaurant Assn. Educational Foundation, U.S. Food & Drug Administration.