Technically speaking

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan, 1994 by Ron Ruggles

The alphabet soup of regulatory agencies and private standards groups is the hearty stew that the National Restaurant Association's three-person Technical Services division thrives on.

"We are the technical advisers to the association," said Bob Harrington, director of the department, which is more than 20 years old. "The full title of the department says it better, and that is: Technical Services, Public Health and Safety. Our function is to advise the association on issues within those areas."

From working in laboratories to meeting with working in laboratories to meeting with working groups, the Technical Services division tries to stay on top of both science and government.

"We try to provide a voice for the foodservice industry in the increasingly complex realm of technical issues, public health, safety, energy, environment, etd.," Harrington said. "We can't be seen as being a perfect savior who has the answer for everything, but we do try to carry the industry's position to those various groups."

It's a letter-perfect world that extends from the recognizable FDA, OSHA, EPA, DOE and ADA to the more obscure NSF, BOCA, SBCC and NFPA. For those who like those things spelled out, the latter letters stand for National Sanitation Foundation, the Building Officials Congress Administration, the Southern Building Code Congress and the National Fire Protection Association.

"At last look there were 38 memberships in those kinds of alphabetic, acronymic organizations," Harrington said.

"We deal with everything from building codes and construction to energy management, fire safety and personal safety," Harrington said.

"We deal with most of the major federal agencies, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculturer the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy," he added. "We started dealing several years ago with the Department of Justice concerning the Americans with Disabilities Act."

His team also includes Steven Grovner, the assistant director of the department, and Kimberly Austin, the manager of operations. They deal with issues ranging from food-borne illnesses to solid-waste reduction.

"I guess you could say we're sort of Renaissance people," Harrington said with a laugh, "but we each have our strengths, and that's where we tend to concentrate. My personal area of strength is food microbiology. Steve is better than I am at equipment engineering. Kim is our environmental person."

Austin, for example, is working with the Solid Waste Composting Council in Virginia to develop recycling options for restaurants. "We're developing a pilot program for restaurants to bring in their solid-food wastes and compost it," said Austin, a former health inspector.

Harrington said food safety will be a continuing challenge for the Technical Service division. "No matter what you do, nothing can ever be risk-free," he said. The department's mission is to educate both ends of the spectrum, from consumers to the regulatory community.

Several years ago that mission gained the then-two-man department the nickname -- perhaps unfairly -- "The Germ Brothers."

"It probably has to do with the sometimes unsavory topics that we have to deal with," Harrington said. "Of course, we deal with them with a great deal of familiarity and impunity. Sometimes that leaves some shocked looks around the table. We sometimes have to recall that some people aren't quite as inured to the subject as we have become."

That discussion might include some of the mechanisms of food-borne illnesses -- how a particular cell infects a particular tissue in the body and why that generates the formation of a toxin, which then invades another tissue and on and on -- or it might be somethEng as prosaic as the breeding habits and life cycles of disease-carrying insects, their habitats and their food.

"Not really table talk," Harrington said, adding that the work and talk is generally more mundane, such as setting standards for measuring energy consumption or the construction standards for floor material. "It's pretty dry but very important," Harrington added.

Besides dealing with federal rules and regulations, the NRA's Technical Services department spends much time with third-party standards organizations.

"These are groups that by themselves have no legal status; they don't generate regulations, they don't enact laws but they produce materials and documents that have the potential to affect the industry as if they were law," Harrington explained.

"The most easily recognizable is NSF, the National Sanitation Foundation. That's a private organization, and manufacturers who submit their equipment for NSF listing are not required to do so. But because it is so widely recognized in the industry, it ends up having the effect of more formalized regulation."

The trio also deals with the nation's three major private building code groups: the Building Officials Congress Administration in the Northeast, the Uniform Building Code in the West and the Southern Building Code Congress in the Southeastern states.