By Douglas A. McIntyre, Michael B. Sauter, and Ashley C. Allen
January 25, 2011
"As last year's Salmonella outbreak and the unethical practices of egg mogul Jack DeCoster proved, our food supply is not always as safe as expected. One problem is that numerous systems exist for reporting foodborne illnesses on a state by state basis, and the difficulty of analyzing the data makes keeping food free from contamination a challenge. Obviously, we cannot mitigate or eliminate problems if we cannot evaluate them systematically. That's why the Center for Science in the Public Interest has reviewed 10 years of records from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine which states do a good job of detecting outbreaks of foodborne illnesses. The newly released study is titled All Over the Map: A 10-Year Review of State Outbreak Reporting (PDF)..."
Click here to see a slideshow of "the heroes and villains of the American food safety world: the seven A's and the 14 F's."
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Center for Science in the Public Interest, major metro media and lawmakers are calling for a universal restaurant cleanliness grading system. LA and NYC have been leaders in creating a letter grade. These systems are a critical step by governments, but they are limited to two major metro areas.
ReplyDeleteDiningGrades.com has created a new, innovative, dynamic restaurant grading system that empowers the consumer to watch for cleanliness and hygiene. If there is a poisoning event, DiningGrades has a mechanism to report it to the health department and to participating restaurants. DiningGrades.com is joining the fight on food poisoning and it is a free service to the public.
As an Emergency Department Doctor for nearly three decades, Dr. Harlan Stueven saw patients suffer and die from food poisoning. So he created a new website, DiningGrades.com, the first and only rating system empowering the consumer to grade a restaurant’s cleanliness and hygiene.
“My Goals in creating DiningGrades.com were to increase awareness of food poisoning and empower the consumer to identify restaurants needing improvement.” Harlan A. Stueven MD
Consumers rely on Public Health inspections, done infrequently and sometimes only once a year to ensure hygienic compliance. Tragically, the Center for Science in the Public Interest reports 66 percent of restaurants had high-risk food safety violations. Violations cause food poisoning.
Consumers dine out and witness unclean food preparation, sloppy serving, dirty tables or silverware and are served food improperly cooked, contaminated or not fresh. But who do they tell?
It is tempting to walk away taking no action, but now, that experience can be rated from a cleanliness and hygienic perspective, using a copyrighted system, on DiningGrades.com. The questions are simple yes or no, are assigned a demerit and are objective. The demerits generate a grade. Grades from every rating are continually merged. It is fast and easy to rate a restaurant. Beginning to end, it takes less than 2 minutes.
DiningGrades.com is also available as an iPhone application. The GPS feature finds the next clean dining location, provides comments about cleanliness from other diners and helps make online reservations. When finished dining, it is easy to rate the restaurant at the table.
By rating a restaurant, consumers learn what to watch for, and there are critical things to look for. The FDA Food Code has over 50 inspection items. Many can be observed outside of the kitchen. Selected Food Code items, as well as important medical hygiene standards, are part of the grading system and grades do make a difference. The LA restaurant hygiene grading program generated a 13.1 percent decrease in the number of food borne disease hospitalizations.
DiningGrades.com makes it easy to report a food poisoning event. Unfortunately many events are not reported. But, now consumers can anonymously report those events on DiningGrades.com. The report is then emailed to the respective State Health Department for investigate and to participating restaurant promoters as an early warning of potential epidemic.
Visit DiningGrades.com. It is Free!