Health Department Inspection Criteria More Likely To Be Associated with Outbreak Restaurants in Minnesota

Abstract

Millions of routine restaurant inspections are performed each year in the United States, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that a majority of foodborne illness outbreaks occur in restaurant settings. In an attempt to relate the data collected during inspections in Minnesota to illness likelihood, data from routine inspections conducted at outbreak restaurants were compared with data from routine inspections conducted at nonoutbreak restaurants. The goal was to identify differences in recorded violations. Significantly more violations were recorded at restaurants that had outbreaks. The majority of these violations were related to contamination in the facility and environment and to food handling procedures. Relative risks also were calculated for violations significantly more likely to occur at locations that had outbreaks of norovirus infection, Clostridium perfringens infection or toxin-type illness, and Salmonella infection. These three pathogens are estimated to cause the majority of foodborne illnesses in the United States. Meta-analysis of composited data for the three pathogens revealed 11 violations significantly more likely (α < 0.05) to be identified during routine inspections at outbreak restaurants than during inspections at nonoutbreak restaurants. Application of this information permits assessment of health department inspection data in a consistent fashion. This approach can help identify criteria more likely to be associated with outbreak locations and allow operators to focus on interventions that will have the most significant impact in higher risk establishments.

Knowledge, attitude and practices of environmental health practitioners conducting food-borne disease outbreak investigation at a local municipality in Gauteng province, South Africa

“…The number of correct responses was very low (88.6% scored less than four out of nine), and respondents responded as follows: differentiating between FBD and FBD outbreak (13.1%), importance of conducting outbreak investigation (14.8%), activities at the outbreak site (16.4%), maintaining the cold chain (18.0%), chain of custody (31.1%) and time frame to finalise and provide feedback (29.5%). This could impair on the urgency of conducting an outbreak investigation, as these differ from routine inspections (Petran, White & Hedberg 2012 ). Such conduct might lead to failure in determining the environmental factors that contributed to the occurrence of an outbreak, and may have detrimental consequences such as failure to prevent further outbreaks.…”

The Presence of Norovirus and Adenovirus on Environmental Surfaces in Relation to the Hygienic Level in Food Service Operations Associated with a Suspected Gastroenteritis Outbreak

“…It has been reported that it is especially challenging to use short duration visual inspection to monitor faults in staff personal hygiene (Leisner et al 2014 ). Petran and colleagues (Petran et al 2012 ) could find correlations between hygienic level and outbreaks in restaurants when outbreaks caused by NoV, Clostridium or Salmonella were investigated based on as many as 54 criteria. According to them, 50% of the relevant criteria were related to food handling, 37% to facilities and 15% to personal hygiene.…”

Assessment of Food and Waterborne Viral Outbreaks by Using Field Epidemiologic, Modern Laboratory and Statistical Methods—Lessons Learnt from Seven Major Norovirus Outbreaks in Finland

“…Immediate control measures and guidance on hygienic practices were implemented to prevent further cases. Hygienic inspections among food operators efficiently corrected actions as in [34,35]. The withdrawal of two days from work since the clearance of gastrointestinal symptoms is a commonly used measure [36,37], and there are presumably constraints to lengthen this.…”