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Failing Grade: Dallas Policies Protect the City’s Filthiest Restaurants from Health Inspectors
The Dallas Observer ^ | May 29, 2018 | Brian Reinhart

Posted on 06/23/2018 8:10:21 AM PDT by texas booster

On Aug. 18, 2016, the Lakewood location of Mi Cocina, a popular upscale Tex-Mex chain, faced one particularly unhappy visitor: a Dallas health inspector.

The food safety report filed that day graded Mi Cocina at 60 points out of 100. The details weren’t pretty. Flies in the kitchen. No hot water for washing dishes. Cooked chicken sitting out at room temperature.

In summary, the report concluded, Mi Cocina “fails to meet City of Dallas Food Protection and Education sanitation standards. 10 day follow-up inspection required.”

That follow-up inspection never took place. Mi Cocina’s next health inspection came 221 days later, on March 27, 2017. The restaurant passed.

...

Dallas recently launched an open data website that, for the first time, allows visitors to read each kitchen’s violations without filing public records requests. But the raw data is intimidating to new users, and it lacks an easy-to-read hub listing restaurants that are failing. So a private citizen rose to the challenge.

On a page called Dallas Health Inspection Horrors, David Lawhon maintains a table of restaurants with low scores, noting repeat offenders and marking the worst facilities with vomit and poo emojis. Lawhon is not a sanitation worker and never has been.

His project began more than a decade ago, after a series of regrettable restaurant meals and a case of food poisoning. At the time, the online Dallas inspection scores were written out in a simple list.

“The information needed to be integrated, to be presented in a more engaging and accessible way, and to answer the simpler question, ‘What businesses should I be concerned about?’ rather than, ‘What is the score for every restaurant in the city?’” Lawhon says.

...

But Lawhon’s work is constrained by one big problem: The city’s data isn’t just badly presented. It’s wrong.

(Excerpt) Read more at dallasobserver.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; News/Current Events; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: food; foodsafety; incompetence; restaurants; safety
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I posted this article after a couple of recent articles on food safety, norovirus on cruise ships, etc. Since I travel for work I eat out a LOT.

I am always amazed at liberals crying for more government (except for border security), when government at any level is at best merely satisfactory and often incompetent.

This is an even-handed look at one big city and how it can't even get basic citizens' food safety correct.

But the city supervisors get an "A" in excuses and deflections.

1 posted on 06/23/2018 8:10:21 AM PDT by texas booster
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To: texas booster
While this is a long article there is a lot of red meat here and worth giving the Observer a few clicks.

If it is this bad in Dallas, what are other cities like across the US?

What about in other countries?

2 posted on 06/23/2018 8:12:03 AM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: texas booster

Payoffs taking place.


3 posted on 06/23/2018 8:12:37 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin (Freedom is the freedom to discipline yourself so others don't have to do it for you.)
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To: texas booster

Ate in Dallas three times this week on a business trip. Two places were big chains and the sanitation was sketchy at best. I stuck to well cooked items. No salads or cold chicken. If the front door is grimy, the restrooms are not clean the kitchen is worse -guaranteed.


4 posted on 06/23/2018 8:17:31 AM PDT by mad_as_he$$ (.)
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
My thought as well.

It's been a time honored tradition since the city of Ur, and human nature hasn't changed at all.

I used to see it on the East Coast when a true dump would have a high score posted on the window. Not a “hole in the wall” but a true dump.

I guess Benjamin is still the language of city inspectors everywhere.

5 posted on 06/23/2018 8:17:35 AM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: texas booster

How many people got sick eating at La Cocina? If none, then I’d say all this “inspection” nonsense was nothing more than bureaucratic restraint of trade.


6 posted on 06/23/2018 8:39:57 AM PDT by IronJack (A)
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To: texas booster

There is a Mi Cocina here in Tulsa. Excellent place. Last time there we had the brisket quesadillas and fish tacos. Yummy. Very clean. Great staff.


7 posted on 06/23/2018 8:40:49 AM PDT by FatherofFive (deIslam is EVIL and needs to be eradicated)
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To: texas booster
The Dallas and Houston Health Department Sanitation inspectors used to be retired USAF Veterinary Food inspectors. When the USAF caught the Army taking bribes in the early 1970’s President Carter by the stroke of a pen dissolved the USAF Veterinary Service which was a very professional and ethical organization. There were no more USAF trained sanitary inspectors after 1982. Those that left the USAF are retiring now or have retired and the health departments are being taken over by lesser trained inspectors with little or no experience or ethics. Houston, Fort Worth, and Dallas were all led by former USAF Veterinary Service high ranked NCO’s. This happened in Texas and was reflected all over the US with the same experience.
8 posted on 06/23/2018 8:43:07 AM PDT by vetvetdoug
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To: MeneMeneTekelUpharsin

City of Denton hired an assistant Dallas city manager as the city manager. Under his management and city council guidelines, city had, when I moved a few years ago, about a dozen Code Enforcement officers and 2 Health inspectors. Reasoning was that the city made more money off code enforcement than restaurant inspections.


9 posted on 06/23/2018 8:46:57 AM PDT by rstrahan
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To: texas booster
As long as they dont stir the Iced tea with a luke warm piece of chicken we should be ok. and the waiter or cook is not a HepA carrier and bathed within the last 10 days.

The chances of Lady D-21 getting to go out for a meal this weekend keeps dropping.

10 posted on 06/23/2018 8:52:27 AM PDT by Delta 21 (Build The Wall !! Jail The Cankle !!)
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To: vetvetdoug
Makes sense that Carter would destroy one of the best professional services the military had.

More soldiers were killed in wars from disease than bullets, which is why these disciplines existed.

11 posted on 06/23/2018 9:03:16 AM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: texas booster
Food safety inspectors in Dallas are struggling with a heavy workload. Twenty-two employees are charged with visiting about 7,100 food preparation facilities

People here asked a few days ago why when I posted about a Whataburger burger flipper put his spatula down the backside of his pants to scratch wasn't reported. Well, there it is. Any restaurant outside a big city doesn't have to worry about being inspected or shut down.

There was one café out here in podunkville that had a backed up septic (stinky feces everywhere) so the restrooms were locked for over a year. Food was stored, in hot Texas, on a dirt floor out back in a screened in area. It only closed down when the owner skipped town.

12 posted on 06/23/2018 9:03:22 AM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola.")
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To: Delta 21

Read on FR yesterday of the increase in HepA.

I got food poisoning a couple months ago. Lasted about a week and a half. Sicker than a dog and thought I was going to die for a couple of days. Read on FR that over 100 got food poisoning from a restaurant catered event in the same city I’d visited and had eaten out in. It was a different restaurant but was coincidental.

This is why I don’t like eating out and rarely do so. I’d much rather cook at home and know what germs are in my food and where they came from. That’s also why I wash my hands when coming in from grocery shopping and wash them again after putting away the food.

Watch tv cooking shows and notice they don’t usually have sinks for the chefs to wash their hands after handling raw meat. Ick.


13 posted on 06/23/2018 9:12:55 AM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola.")
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To: IronJack
>I?The food safety report filed that day graded Mi Cocina at 60 points out of 100. The details weren’t pretty. Flies in the kitchen. No hot water for washing dishes. Cooked chicken sitting out at room temperature. Another problem for the restaurant: “toxics stored with food and toxic spray bottle used on food.”

Sorry but these are pretty serious code violations. While only a snapshot in time, if kitchen staff doesn't know how to maintain cooked food before serving, and if the kitchen manager doesn't even boil water for hand washing dishes; all are signs of very poor training and enforcement by the restaurant management.

These are really bad sanitation practices. People can and will get very sick from kitchens as poorly managed as this. Overall I really like Mi Cocina but their sanitation practices point to poor hiring practices.

If a full serve, expensive restaurant can't be bothered to understand sanitation then they should be shut down.

I needed a health card when I worked in a restaurant, which is an admittedly weak form of inspection. But TB and Hep A B C can kill.

AFAIK all health cards were dropped once AIDS carriers became a protected class.

14 posted on 06/23/2018 9:13:16 AM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: bgill

I’ve witnessed, more than once, a café owner’s kid having it’s diaper changed on the kitchen counter or tables and the surface never being wiped down much less sterilized. No, never ate there. That place, in another podunville small town, was open for decades and never saw an inspector.


15 posted on 06/23/2018 9:15:49 AM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola.")
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To: bgill
That restaurant in podunkville sounds like one of many I visited when traveling all over South Texas.

The spatula scraper should be more upset when his mom asks him how he got grease inside his shorts ...

16 posted on 06/23/2018 9:16:41 AM PDT by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: texas booster

Here, outside of Austin, I haven’t heard of anyone needing a health card. Food workers come and go like a revolving door.


17 posted on 06/23/2018 9:19:22 AM PDT by bgill (CDC site, "We don't know how people are infected with Ebola.")
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To: texas booster

But isn’t this really what we’ve come to expect from government at all levels? Government agencies virtually all exist for the sole benefit of the government workers. They are simply government “jobs programs” with some “public benefit or control” as their pretext.


18 posted on 06/23/2018 9:23:02 AM PDT by vette6387
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To: texas booster
I understand peoples' fear of "unsanitary" food service practices. But a lot of those fears are overblown, paranoid even. And governments capitalize on those paranoias by pretending to safeguard against the dangers.

As we've seen here, the watchdogs don't really do their jobs, or at least do them inconsistently. Yet no adverse effects materialize. So how useful are the watchdogs in the first place, aside from making people believe they're safer? (And stealing taxpayer money, bribes, and power).

19 posted on 06/23/2018 9:26:49 AM PDT by IronJack (A)
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To: texas booster

Calling Gordon Ramsay

Please pick up the white telephone.


20 posted on 06/23/2018 11:29:12 AM PDT by ridesthemiles
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