The Philadelphia Board of Health has modernized its inspection system! The extra-exciting part - a new page on their web site that will display inspection reports. Of course, it’s not up yet and they would never dream of leaving up the old site that shows restaurants violations for 2008, so you’ll just have to use Welcome to Philly’s searchable restaurant inspection mashup map for now. The Inky has a long piece on the new program - restaurants will now be inspected twice a year, a welcome increase from what was sometimes as infrequent as every two years, but “limited-service” operations like food trucks will only be inspected once.
They’ve also changed the focus of inspections to be more in line with that the FDA recommends - a “risk-based” approach that most other cities have adopted. The shift in focus is moving more towards employee knowledge and hygiene or as the department head describes it to the paper:
“If you sneeze in the food, you are more likely to make them sick than if you have mouse droppings in a corner somewhere,” said Palak Raval-Nelson, chief of the office of food protection since 2007.
Oh, the lesser of two evils, right? You can download the details on the new inspection program from the Food Protection Office here.
Turning up the heat on Phila. food-safety inspections [The Inquirer]
