Food safety managers matter when it comes to hygiene in restaurants and delis, FDA study shows

FDA: Hire a food safety cop … please.

It may not be able to get a food safety bill through Congress, but the Food and Drug Administration soldiers on in efforts to improve hygiene, sanitation and other elements of a safe food supply.

On Friday, the agency released the results of a 10-year study that found that retail food establishments with certified food safety managers did significantly better in meeting safety standards than facilities that didn’t have them.

The study looked at more than 800 retail food establishments in 1998, 2003 and 2008 and five risk factors: food from unsafe sources, poor personal hygiene, inadequate cooking, improper holding of food (time and temperature) and contaminated food surfaces and equipment.

The study found in part that “the presence of a certified food protection manager in four facility types was correlated with statistically significant higher compliance levels with food safety practices and behaviors than in facilities lacking a certified manager.”

“For instance, compliance in full-service restaurants was 70% with a manager, versus 58% without a manager. In delicatessens, compliance was 79% with a manager, versus 64% without. For seafood markets, compliance with a manager was 88%, versus 82% without. And in produce markets, compliance was 86% with a manager, versus 79% without.”

In making a case that having in-house expertise on food safety issues translates to better regulatory compliance, the FDA is appealing to food retailers’ bottom lines, since better compliance presumably leads to fewer costly food-borne illness outbreaks.

The agency also is pushing state and local governments to adopt its Model Food Code, which recommends standards for management and personnel, food operations and equipment and facilities.

All of this translates into an effort to get businesses to voluntarily pick up a greater share of the regulatory burden, something that may seem counterintuitive for an agency and an administration that has not been shy about seeking greater enforcement authority.

But with Democratic majorities in Congress likely to narrow or vanish in the November election, the window for getting lawmakers to sign off on more clout for regulatory bureaucracies like the FDA – such as that sought in the long-stalled food safety legislation -- is closing.

Friday’s announcement may be a rehearsal for FDA’s new approach to industry: cajoling instead of issuing orders to it. Read the entire 2009 retail food report here.

-- Andy Zajac / Los Angeles Times