New restaurant rules focus on food borne illness

By Jay Warren
WSLS10 Anchor
Published: May 7, 2008

In the kitchen at the Famous Anthony’s on Route 460 cooks prepare thousands of meals a week. The same goes for the kitchen at the Roanoke Plaza Hotel where Chief Chef Jay Cooper gave away his secret ingredient.

“The quality is 90% of the taste of food.“

For him, the top of that list is cleanliness.

“That’s the critical thing in a kitchen.“

The health department couldn’t say it any better and they’re making sure all restaurants across the commonwealth get on board.

“We want to focus on the risk factors, those things that are going to cause food borne illness,“ said inspector Cindy McDow. “It’s important to have sanitation. It’s important to have a good facility, but those things aren’t going to cause food borne illness. It’s some of the other things like the temperatures and where they’re getting their food that’s really, really important and we haven’t really been looking at that I don’t think close enough.“

So, the health department has changed its focus from basic sanitation to food preparation and handling. That includes requiring refrigerators to cool things to 41 degrees instead of the warmer, old standard of 45-degrees.

“The bacteria love the higher temperatures and if they have the opportunity and the time to grow, they will grow,“ McDow said.

At the Roanoke Plaza Hotel, that required replacing some coolers, redesigning some, and doing some mechanical repairs on others.

McDow has seen that before.

“Some of the refrigeration units just can’t keep up,“ she said.

And that is keeping Frank Nash busy. He owns a refrigeration business. Since the new standards went into effect calls to him have gone up 35%.

Nash says when it comes to food temperatures “there’s no second guessing.“

The same goes for where food comes from. The health department is now going over a restaurant’s list of distributors making sure they’re okay.

McDow says, “Are they holding it at the right temperature before it gets to you? What kind of trucks do they have to transport the food to you? If you don’t know if they’ve been inspected by anybody, you really don’t know how they’re handling their food.“

The changes don’t stop there. Another key element is the labeling of food. The health department requires restaurants to put a date on canned and dried goods and then rotate those products so the oldest product is used first.

Finally, you’ll see a lot more gloves in kitchens. You may have thought this was already a rule. But it wasn’t ,until now. Workers can no longer touch ready to eat food with their bare hands.

All of this is to ensure that what you eat out won’t make you sick and you’ll hear no complaints from most chefs like Cooper.

“Absolutely. It’s a really good thing,“ he said.