Meet Your Local Health Inspector

[Editor’s Note: Starting next month, New Canaan Patch will report in a regular feature on restaurants that will include information on how local establishments are faring in health inspections with the town. To ensure that we give our readers some context to those reports, we’re presenting a series of informational articles first, including this one, that discuss the work of the New Canaan Health Department, which oversees inspections.]

Restaurants in New Canaan that require follow-up health inspections from the town almost always are found to be out of compliance with one of 10 “four-point items” or requirements that officials look for during regular assessments.

According to Carla DeLucia (see video), a sanitarian with the New Canaan Health Department who oversees the bulk of restaurant inspections, food temperatures are something she always checks.

“It’s important for us to make sure that everything is really hot and cold at the right temperature,” she said.

Local restaurants have an outstanding record in this regard.

According to Briggs Geddis, New Canaan’s director of environmental health, no verified case of food poisoning has followed from a restaurant in town in more than 20 years. (That doesn’t mean nobody has ever eaten something at a local restaurant and later felt unwell—food poisoning itself is something specific, whose signs do not emerge for about 18 hours after eating.)

The rate at which restaurants in town require follow up because they technically have “failed” a health inspection—that is, the establishment either is deemed out of compliance with one of 10 items (listed below) or, overall it is issued more than 20 “demerits”—varies widely from month to month, DeLucia said.

Local officials use a state Department of Public Health form during inspections that includes a total of 100 possible points, so that a perfect score (such as the movie theater downtown received in its latest inspection, on Dec. 26) would be zero demerits and a perfect 100. The demerits are grouped in order of severity on a scale of one to four, so that those areas marked “four” are the most serious.

Here are the 10 4-point items:

Sources of food

• approved source, wholesome, nonadulterated

Food protection

• potentially hazardous food meets temperature requirements during storage, preparation, display, service and transportation
• unwrapped or potentially hazardous food not re-served
• toxic items properly stored, labeled, used

Personnel

• Personnel with infection restricted

Cleanliness of personnel

• Handwashing facilities provided, personnel hands washed, clean

Water supply

• Water source adequate, safe

Sewage disposal

• Sewage disposal approved

Plumbing

• No cross connection, back siphonage, backflow

Toilet facilities

• Adequate, convenient, accessible, designed, installed

Should a restaurant fail its inspection, the department returns within two weeks to check that those areas where the establishment was out of compliance have been addressed. Geddis says the department sees itself as a friend to local businesses and is eager to see all restaurants up to code.