Ship sanitation inspections: an upclose look at the Vessel Sanitation Program - Behind The Scenes

Cruise Travel, March-April, 2004 by Robert White

"What a coincidence!" Hubert Buelacher, Crystal Harmony food & beverage manager, said. "We were in Victoria three days ago and the Canadian National Health Department inspectors came aboard for a surprise inspection. They gave us 100 percent!"

It was a coincidence, because I had gone to San Francisco, where Crystal Cruises' Crystal Harmony was turning around for her summer-long voyages to British Columbia and Alaska, to find oat about the U.S. Vessel Sanitation Program and its inspections.

Many people, even some who have taken a dozen or more cruises, are only vaguely or not at all aware of the Vessel Sanitation Program. Yet it is an important development in the world of cruise ships. It works like this: every vessel that carries 13 or more passengers, and calls at foreign ports and also at a U.S. port, is boarded at least twice a year by U.S. Department of Health officials, who take a close look at food safety and sanitation on the ship. The inspections are never announced in advance

The inspectors fill out a "Vessel Sanitation Inspection Report" with 42 items to be checked. Each item has a value of one to five points, the total adding up to 100. A "Satisfactory" score is 86 or higher. A perfect score isn't attained often--the slightest slip takes points off. The Crystal Harmony had been inspected in Juneau and received 91 points just a month before the Canadian inspectors awarded the ship 100 points--yet the U.S. and Canadian programs are identical.

In this case, Buelacher told me, a refrigerator that was checked at 6 a.m. on the morning of the U.S. inspection and was perfectly all right (each piece of food-handling equipment is checked and the results entered in a log several times each day) had ceased operating by 10 a.m. when the inspector opened it. Because it hadn't been needed in the interim, there was still "food in a non-operating refrigerator." That cost a bunch of points.

The program started in the U.S. in 1975, following several major disease outbreaks on cruise ships. Congress directed the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to do something, and the cruise lines cooperated. The program is voluntary, but every line joins in. And, happily, fees paid by the lines pay the costs of the program.

The breadth of the Inspection Report and its detail seemed overwhelming, at least to me, a single person whose Kitchen Sanitation Program consists of occasionally remembering to take a swish with a damp cloth at the kitchen counter. The CDC's full Inspection Report starts with Disease Reporting, examining if the ship's doctor has kept a medical log and reported any disease discovered. This initial item counts for five points.

The Potable Water section of the report took me down steep, narrow, iron stairs into the cavernous engine room with assistant chief engineer Andreas Sukke, who pointed out how the engineers maintain the purity of the ship's water supply with daily checks and rechecks of the half-dozen dials and meters that log the slightest variation in chemical imbalance. Five items here total 23 points.

Back up ondeck all was fresh air and sunshine. It was one of those beautiful fog-free days in San Francisco, with the bright orange span of the Golden Gate Bridge gleaming in one direction, the long, gray Bay Bridge in the other, and the sharp-edged skyline running spectacularly up and over the city's seven hills The deck officers are in charge of the swimming pools and hot tubs, where there is twice daily checking of water purity and equipment safety. Two items, four points.

Then it was time to take a look at the Inspection Report's 800-pound gorilla: Food Safety. Marcelle Haywood, Crystal Harmony sanitation officer--an attractive South African who is a microbiologist, hygienist, and hazard analyst--gave me the grand tour of the dining rooms, store rooms, and galley.

Food Safety is separated into sections in the report. Personnel covers things like chefs' and kitchen workers' knowledge of hygienic food-handling and how often hands are washed. Haywood said the sharp-eyed inspectors are on the lookout for the slightest deviance from the rules. Three items to watch for a total of nine points.

The rood itself is checked at each stage of storage, preparation, transportation, and display and service. Every step is logged. Woe be to the chef whose log is not up-to-date. For instance, it is an inviolable rule that once any item of food is handled, it must be consumed within tour hours or it is thrown out. Sous chef Gabon Merci pulled a log sheet at random to show me an example.

At 7 a.m. melons were taken from a refrigerator. A slim food thermometer (almost everyone in the galley carries one) was inserted into one, the temperature at the center was 37 degrees, as it should be. The exteriors of the melons were washed with a chlorine solution of 100 parts per million; next, the fruit was cut into slices, and then went into a blast chiller to bring the temperature back down to the proper level.

Three hours later the melons were taken to a buffet. By 11 a.m. those that had not been eaten were taken away. That night they were ground up, the water drawn off, and what remained was disposed of at sea by burning. (In an aside, I told the ship's food & beverage manager that I had many times heard passengers say they hated to see so much food "wasted." Buelacher assured me there was actually very little waste. It was his job to order only as much as would be consumed.) Food Protection makes up 10 items, totaling 23 points.