15.nov.06
Chicago Sun-Times
Fran Spielman
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/136264,CST-NWS-inspect15.article
Aldermen were told Tuesday that Chicago has 46 Health Department sanitarians and 12 supervisors to inspect 15,500 restaurants and food stores amidst questions about whether the city is doing enough to combat food-borne illness.
Chief sanitarian Victor Young was quoted as saying, "We do it by prioritizing. High-risk establishments we inspect more than low-risk establishments. Low-risk establishments do not" get inspected every year.
Young defined "low risk" as establishments that serve prepackaged food and have a "low-risk of food-borne illness factors."
About 6,000 of the city's 15,500 food establishments fall into the high-risk category and are inspected annually. The rest get cleanliness visits every two years unless complaints trigger more frequent inspections.
Young noted that in 1982, when Chicago had far fewer restaurants, the Health Department had roughly 150 sanitarians. Budget cuts over the years have steadily diminished that number.
Ald. Tom Tunney (44th), owner of Ann Sather restaurants, was quoted as saying, "Any time any individual customer complains, we get a Health Department inspection. Oftentimes, it ends up being not warranted. We're inspected twice a year and, above and beyond that, based on a consumer complaint. That's serious enough regulation as far as I'm concerned. I find the consumer is as good of an inspector as anybody. At least in my community, they're very educated and very on top of it."
Since 1997, there have been 112 outbreaks of food-borne disease in Chicago, 83 of them detected after citizen complaints. The number of incidents spiked at 18 in 2000. Through Nov. 1 of this year, there have been 10 cases.
Most are caused by either improper cooling of pre-cooked food, inadequate cooking, poor personal hygiene, contaminated equipment or food from unsafe sources.