Uniformity sought in food sanitation

A bill passed out Tuesday by a House committee would ensure that county health departments sing from the same songbook when it comes to food sanitation at restaurants and other food establishments.

HB114, passed out unanimously by the House Business and Labor Committee, seeks to ensure standardization of enforcement of food sanitation rules among local health departments. It also calls for the state Department of Health to provide technical help to those departments.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Stephen Clark, R-Provo, said he discovered the problem after having a poor reaction to a restaurant meal.

"I checked with the county inspectors, and they were telling me that a few years ago the Legislature had wiped out all the funding for the state to help administer the sanitation program among the counties, and they had just a very minimal, minimal program, and that many of the counties were only responding on complaints rather than inspections," Clark said. "And I just felt like that was probably not a wise decision."

Two positions were eliminated from the Bureau of Food Safety following budget cuts in the 2002 Legislature. Their duties included writing rules governing food safety and training county inspectors.

In the new bill, the department would use administrative rules that would include a minimum number of periodic on-site inspections that must be conducted by each local health department, the criteria for additional inspections and standardized methods to be used by local health departments.

"It doesn't reinstate what we had, but it's a start, and I think it will help the counties and the state in a great degree in inspecting and regulating the handling of food," Clark said.

The bill calls for additional staff of 1 1/2 positions, giving the state two full-time people to deal with the matter. "They'll develop consistent rules and consistent regulations, and then they'll help train the counties' inspectors on how to look for problems and to help businesses solve their problems," Clark said.

Kathy Froerer, executive director of the Utah Association of Local Health Departments and the Utah Association of Local Boards of Health, said local departments conducted about 7,600 restaurant inspections last year, when the state had 748 infections related to food-borne illnesses.

But departments often use different methods to do their work. "What we'd like to see is a standardization from the state down. . . . It would actually minimize the risk of there being a difference in the way an inspection is done, from Logan to St. George. From our point of view, we'd really like to see this passed. It will make a great difference for local public health," Froerer said.

Jim Olsen, president of the Utah Food Industry Association, was among speakers supporting the bill, saying it can "bring some coordination to our health rules and laws throughout the state, which we feel like we need with all the various local health departments out there."

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com