Local News
YumaSun.com
Jeffery Gautreaux Sun Staff Writer
Jun 12, 2005
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series about restaurant food safety and Yuma County’s efforts to enforce restaurant sanitation standards.
With the population booming in the county and people eating out more and more often, Brian O’Green, manager for environmental health for the Yuma County Health Department, said the food service industry is becoming more and more difficult to regulate.
But despite the current hepatitis A scare, O’Green said food-borne illnesses remain rare occurrences in the county.

“We have a difficult job,” O’Green said. “The inspectors are busy every day. We do the best we can to protect the public. Most restaurants do a good job, but we’ll always have problems.”
Hepatitis A is considered one of the worst diseases that can occur, but there are about a dozen others, of differing severities, that inspectors tend to see.
O’Green said some of the most common food-borne illnesses are caused by campylobacters. These bacteria are transmitted from animals to people, normally through food, and can cause diarrhea, upset stomach, nausea and vomiting.
The bacteria can cause campylobacteriosis, which lasts three to six days. “Those are the ones on cruise ships that can be passed easily, often just through touch,” O’Green said.
Bob Gomez, program manager for food safety and environmental services for the Arizona Department of Health Services, said his state inspectors often see noroviruses, which are highly infectious and can cause acute gastroenteritis. These viruses, sometimes known as “Norwalk viruses,” are also prevalent on cruise ships.
“From time to time, these things emerge,” Gomez said.
The state handles inspection for state prisons, Department of Economic Security facilities and behavioral health facilities.
Staph infections can also be a problem, O’Green said, such as if a cook has a cut on his hand and it gets into the food.
O’Green said it takes a lot of sanitation mistakes in succession to end up with the outbreak of a food-borne illness. “If you break the chain anywhere, it’s unlikely that somebody is going to become ill,” he said.
Because of demand, O’Green said the department had to re-evaluate their operations.
Starting July 1, the county health department plans to begin going to high-risk facilities four times a year, rather than two. O’Green said these were complex food service operations that mix a lot of foods or hospitals and day care centers that serve a lot of children.
“We had that planned prior to this,” he said.
The four county inspectors that O’Green oversees make stops at every restaurant, taco stand, traveling lunch cart and elementary school lunchroom in the county — a total of about 1,500 facilities that must be inspected twice a year with unannounced walk-ins.
Much of the inspectors’ work is repetition. O’Green said they tend to see the same violations, but they always must be pointed out and corrected.
When many people think of health code violations, they envision dirty kitchen floors and atrocious customer bathrooms. But O’Green said a dirty kitchen floor does not necessarily mean the food is unsafe.
No one is going to eat food off the floor, so it is more important for employees to wash their hands religiously and ensure food is at the proper temperature, O’Green said.
“I’m much more worried about the employee restroom than the consumer restroom,” he said. “I want to see that there is adequate paper towels and hand soap and other things they need.”
O’Green said employee hand washing is the number one concern for inspectors. They also look for temperature violations, poor handling techniques and cross-contamination of foods.
Since inspectors cannot be everywhere, O’Green said the county must count on management to ensure that correct handling techniques are used.
Gomez said state inspectors make visits biannually and tend to see the same violations as county inspectors. In Yuma, state inspectors visit behavioral health operations at Eagle Ranch, Child and Family Services of Yuma Inc., The Excel Group and Crossroads Mission.
Also, the state inspects Arizona State Prison Complex- Yuma.
“We have a dedicated inspector for state prisons,” Gomez said. “We really focus on time and temperature abuse violations and the dating of foods.”
Because prisons have such large populations in close quarters, Gomez said for every meal staff pulls what is called a “dead man’s tray.” This is one meal that is placed in a refrigerator for a certain length of time.
“If we have some people get sick, we can pull that tray for analysis and give us an idea what might have happened and make the diagnosis quicker,” Gomez said.
The county checks out every complaint they receive from citizens, O’Green said. He said often no other sick people turn up, and the person who called with a complaint may have been getting sick anyway.
“We’ll go out to the facility and check all the temperatures and the procedures and do an inspection. We’ll follow up, but it’s difficult to say how someone got sick,” he said.
Gomez said the state has delegated food service inspection to counties, but the agencies work together. He said the state tries to serve as a resource for counties, provides training for licensed sanitarians and works with management.
The state has been receiving updates about the hepatitis situation, Gomez said.