September 24, 2004
BY JANET RAUSA FULLER Staff Reporter Advertisement
Employees at three out of four restaurants don’t wash their hands well enough or often enough while handling your food.
More than half of fast-food joints aren’t properly cleaning work surfaces and utensils used to cook your burger.
And roughly two out of three deli departments aren’t storing ready-to-eat foods at the right temperatures.
Those are among the findings in a new report released this week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
In 2003, the agency inspected 926 food-service establishments nationwide in nine categories — including elementary schools, hospitals, nursing homes and retail — and found widespread risks of food-borne illnesses.
The most common red flags in every category: improper food storage, poor employee hygiene and contaminated equipment.

Fifty-four percent of fast-food workers, 40 percent of nursing home employees and 32 percent of school cafeteria workers were lax about washing their hands. Among full-service restaurants, 78 percent didn’t store cold foods at the right temperature, 57 percent failed to properly sanitize work surfaces and utensils and nearly half weren’t separating raw meat from ready-to-eat foods, the report found.
“We know there are challenges out there for the industry in terms of controlling hazards,” said Glenda Lewis of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “This report is a snapshot that tells us we still have a ways to go.”
Findings challenged
But Steven Grover, vice president of health and safety regulatory affairs for the National Restaurant Association, said the figures are misleading and overshadow the fact that food-borne illnesses are on the decline. He questioned the training of the FDA inspectors.
State and local food codes and training standards often differ from the FDA’s own code, so a restaurant cited by the FDA for storing foods a few degrees above at a certain temperature might well be in compliance with local code, Grover said.
“The [FDA] code says 41 degrees; the local code could say 45,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a food safety risk unless you do further investigation.”
Grover said a top priority of the association is to provide food safety training to food service managers, 315,000 of which are certified according to the FDA’s food code.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say about 76 million Americans contract food-borne illnesses annually. The incidence of several infections, including E. coli and salmonella, has declined “significantly” since 1996, an April report by the CDC found.