Diners Need to Know

There’s nothing quite as likely to ruin your appetite as perusing the Food Facilities Closure Report on the Web site of Ventura County’s Environmental Health Division. A rodent infestation here, a sewage flood there--the nauseating litany of unsanitary conditions goes on and on.

The information is eye-opening, to be sure, and important to share for the safety and satisfaction of potential diners. Even more useful would be a system that required all restaurants to post letter grades that reflected how they fared on their most recent health inspection.

We support Thousand Oaks Councilman Dan Del Campo’s campaign for Ventura County to adopt a grade-posting program similar to the one used in Los Angeles County since 1998. It’s not something that one or even all of the county’s 10 cities can do. Restaurant inspections are a county responsibility, and any requirement to post grades would need to come from the Board of Supervisors. Nonetheless, a majority of the Thousand Oaks City Council gave Del Campo permission to solicit comments from other cities and bring the matter up at next month’s meeting of the Ventura Council of Governments.

This early stage of discussion is the time to note that the Los Angeles County ordinance is far more informative than the policies adopted elsewhere in Southern California. Each Los Angeles County restaurant must post the letter grade it received in its last inspection, based on a rating scale that gives an A to restaurants falling in the 90-to-100 range, a B for 80 to 89 and a C for 70 to 79. Restaurants within the 60-to-69 range have to post their exact numbers, and if any restaurant is deemed unfit it can be closed immediately. Added numerical weight is given to serious infractions.

In contrast, an A in Riverside or San Diego county simply means minimum health code standards have been met; B means improvements must be made, and C means a health hazard that could close the restaurant. Just this month Orange County eateries began to post official food safety “inspection notification seals” to mark businesses that have passed a health and food cleanliness inspection.

Ventura County supervisors rejected a restaurant ratings ordinance about two years ago, deciding that the county’s three-times-a-year restaurant inspections were sufficient. Health department officials said a ratings ordinance would not strengthen inspections.

We support a consumer-oriented program on the Los Angeles County model. Diners deserve to know at a glance which eating establishments are giving proper attention to cleanliness and food safety.

In the meantime, take a look at the list of closures on the county’s Web site:

www.ventura.org/env_hlth/env.htm

It gives new meaning to the phrase “dinner reservations.”