Reporter finds the story behind food code violations
Filed under: Government, Health data, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline, Public health, Public records
All the time that The Muskegon Chronicle’s Brian McVicar has been spending with his county health department’s inspection records has paid off with a slew of stories, with the most recent turning the spotlight on the thousands of food code violations area businesses have racked up in recent years.
Photo by bookgrl via FlickrFor this particular story, McVicar crunched the numbers on 22,000 violations, 37 percent of them critical, logged over a four-year period. Among the most salient, he writes, were “Raw chicken and crabmeat sitting out at room temperature, food kept past its expiration date, cockroaches, mice and fruit flies living in kitchens, employees not following proper hand washing procedures.”
In addition to the typical rogue restaurants, McVicar found that a wide range of local businesses were guilty of health code violations, including “Schools, hospitals, and food stands found in places such as Michigan’s Adventure Amusement Park.”
With his broad-based, data-oriented methodology, McVicar provides a model for other local reporters looking to move beyond the typical “cherrypick the cockroach horror stories” approach that is so often found in inspection-record stories.
Stories in the series:
- Food code violations rampant; food poisoning outbreaks rare
- Management is key to cleaning up food code violations
- Handwashing, temperature storage key to keeping foods safe
- Are some restaurants allowed to get too many health violations?
- Day in the life of a Muskegon County health inspector
- Food poisoning outbreaks rare, but serious
- Some states grade restaurants based on health inspections
- Food code violations: Public health risk or over-burdensome government regulation?
Airport dining proves to be a food safety challenge
Filed under: Hot Health Headline, Public health, Public records
USA Today’s Alison Young reviewed inspection reports for hundreds of restaurants at 10 airports and found a large number of critical violations, including 42 percent of the restaurants reviewed at Seattle-Tacoma and 77 percent of restaurants reviewed at Reagan National Airport.
The most common culprits? “Grab-and-go” sandwiches and related foods, which aren’t kept cold enough to ward off food-borne pathogens.
Young notes that it’s hard to pinpoint the number sickened by airport sandwiches, as it’s difficult to track foodborne illness back to a specific source even when the customers aren’t constantly boarding airplanes and taking off for all corners of the earth.
Scott Hensley, on NPR’s Shots blog, recently noted an FDA warning to a Denver kitchen that prepared thousands of meals a day for airlines:
We can sum up the findings in the LSG SkyChefs facility a few months back with a four-letter abbreviation used to describe the roaches and other insects found there: TNTC.
That stands for Too Numerous To Count.
Hensley runs down some of the other problems found there and a reaction from the company spokeswoman.
AHCJ resources
Lifting the shroud: Using multiple-cause-of-death data
Fatal Food: A study of illness outbreaks
Recent news
Loophole allows E. coli-tainted meat to be sold
Meat, dairy products transported in unsafe temperatures, overlooked by inspectors
Airlines delay testing of onboard water
Salmonella outbreak: A selection of recent stories
N.Y. school districts not meeting federal guidelines on cafeteria inspections
Private companies, not the FDA, increasingly perform food safety inspections
Web sites
Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy
Outbreak Alert! Database
-
Join us in Atlanta
for Health Journalism 2012
Fellowship applications
due Feb. 27
New at HealthJournalism.org
- Data gives depth to investigation of patient safety
- What reporters should know about Alzheimer’s and related dementias
- Apply for fellowships to attend Health Journalism 2012
- AHCJ asks Supreme Court to permit broadcast of arguments in health reform case
- Tips for print, online journalists to embrace broadcast opportunities
- Numbers reveal how often, or how rarely, states check doctors’ disciplinary records
- How I did it: Falsified charts in nursing homes linked to patient care
- Access Denied: Looking at a lack of health care availability
- Transparency & medical errors: Public reporting of patient harm is a potent force
