The city of New York department of mental health and hygiene bureau of food safety and community sanitation restaurant health inspectors and administrators

Art Culinaire, Wntr, 2006 by Laurie Woolever

SM: Simona Mills, Associate Public Health Sanitarian Level I

MP: Marina Politis, Associate Public Health Sanitarian Level III; Director, Office of Customer Service, Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation

MR: Michelle Robinson, Administrative Public Health Sanitarian; Deputy Executive Director, Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation

AC: Simona, how did you come to be a restaurant inspector?

SM: After graduating from college, I knew that wanted to work in the health department. I like the fact that inspectors are advocates for the public and their food. Basically, I tell people, my grandmother is 100 years old, and I want her to be able to eat in a restaurant, burp and walk away waving, instead of dropping from some food-borne illness. That's my motivation: to protect the public and look out for their best interests.

AC: What kind of training does an inspector go through?

SM: A Public Health Sanitarian has to have a bachelor's degree with 30 credits in the biological and physical sciences, or an associate's degree with 12 credits in the biological sciences, and five years' experience working in the field of environmental health. And once we're hired, we go through a four-month, intensive field and classroom training program through the Department's Health Academy.

AC: When you're out in the field, do you work by yourself or in pairs?

SM: It depends on the program. If I'm doing an initial inspection, I'm on my own. If we're doing an accelerated program, we'll go out in pairs.

AC: What is an accelerated program?

SM: That would be for restaurants that are not quite 'getting it', who are failing inspections consecutively.

MP: They're restaurants that are actually being monitored and have a history of non-compliance. In those instances, you'll go out in pairs.

AC: What goes on in a typical day as a restaurant inspector?

SM: If I'm doing regular inspections, I'll get to five or six sites in a day. It's a gamut--everything from breakfast places and delis to four-star establishments. Every day we're going out and dealing with different people and different personalities. I have learned so much about different types of food. We have to look at everything from a public health perspective--what kinds of ingredients do you use, are they being used properly, are they safe? We want chefs to be able to maintain the integrity of their food, while at the same time meeting the health code. But what we really want to do is get people to understand that we're there to help. We try to teach as well as enforce. We're basically enforcers, but our first priority is as teachers.

What I'm working on now are consultations for the Golden Apple Excellence in Food Safety Initiative. The program was designed to help restaurants increase their food safety. We offer advanced food safety classes for managers, and an award for those establishments that measure up to certain standards set by the department.

MP: We're working with something called 'active managerial control,' where we look at every point where something can go wrong with food safety, from the point of receiving to the point of consumption. That's the whole scope of it. We're certainly HACCP-izing it, and we're also looking at the whole operation of the establishment.

AC: HACCP-ize?

MP: Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points. It's a system to control the food from the time it is being produced--from, let's say, a calf being slaughtered, to the point of consumption, and those points where it can go wrong.

SM: That's the backbone of this whole program: having managers more active in what the entire establishment is doing, from the busboy all the way to the person receiving bills and writing things down. It's kind of fun when we go in for consultations, because it's a different air. We're going in to show them how to incorporate their managerial skills within an actual operation. When they find out they're not getting any violations, they say 'Come on in!' They're more receptive. We help them understand, for instance, why they should keep a cooking log for chicken. Because if they don't cook the chicken to the proper temperature, they're gonna have some issues. So doing this will stop people from complaining about the food and prevent a lot of problems. The log reflects what they're physically doing. My job is to bring the physical work and the managerial aspect together easily and effectively.

MP: The regulatory industry calls it 'active managerial control'--helping and requiring managers to have the best knowledge so they can better manage their establishment. We tell people, 'You don't have to get violations, but there are things that you have to do to manage your staff.'

AC: How long has the Golden Apple program been around?

MR: One year. Right now we have 14 recipients of this award.

SM: It's our way of rewarding those who are doing right and educating those who are not working up to code.

AC: New York is such a culturally diverse city, especially in the restaurant business. When you're out in the field, are you often faced with language barriers or other cultural differences?