Oklahoma health specialists inspect restaurants
Oklahoma health specialists inspect restaurants

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Published: September 7, 2008

TULSA - The 100 specialists who evaluate food safety at Oklahoma's 22,800 restaurants have a lot on their plates.

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The state employs about 60 inspectors across 75 counties, with the remainder employed by the Tulsa and Oklahoma county health departments, which conduct their own restaurant inspections.

They also are responsible for inspecting food manufacturers, hotels and motels, public swimming pools, tattoo parlors and dog-bite incidents.

Prior to the creation of the Department of Environmental Quality, inspectors, who each average 500 to 600 routine restaurant inspections a year, had an even heavier workload, said Vernon Bolz, chief of the consumer health service for the state Department of Health.

"Now we have focused primarily on food safety," he said.

Their work has come under scrutiny as the Country Cottage, a Locust Grove restaurant, remains the focus of an E. coli outbreak that has killed one man and left at least 206 people sick.

While they have mobilized resources to pinpoint the cause, state Health Department officials also have had to deploy additional personnel to respond to thousands of telephone and Internet inquiries from the public.

"I think this incident has heightened how important our inspectors think their jobs are," Bolz said.

Statistics indicate, however, that field inspectors don't necessarily regard themselves as the "sanitary police."

Since July 1, 2007, the department has revoked the license of one food establishment and issued an order to cease and desist to one other establishment.

During that same time, 31 food establishments paid fines totaling $58,057.

Because they say routine inspections serve merely as a snapshot in time, Health Department officials stress it's important to promote the safe handling of food by focusing on educating and training restaurant employees.

"If you go in as the sanitary police and not work with restaurants, you're going to have a lot of ire, I think, from different people in the community," said Stephen Ronck, deputy commissioner.

Jim Hopper, president of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association and a member of the Food Service Advisory Council, said he views it as a partnership.

"We all have the same goal to operate efficiently and not make anybody sick," he said.

Inspectors work off of a 51-item food inspection report that is divided into 22 critical and 29 non-critical violations. Not cooking poultry to 165 degrees would be classified as a critical violation, while a dirty floor under the food preparation area might be considered a non-critical violation, Bolz said.

The necessity to respond to an increasing number of statewide emergencies, state budget cuts and operational cost increases has put a strain on all aspects of the inspection process, officials said.

"It's always a challenge for public health to efficiently and wisely use its resources to address public health needs," Henry Hartsell Jr., deputy commissioner for protective health services, said.

The Health Department recently imposed a strict hiring freeze, which might further affect the inspection process. The department already has five openings that department officials said they couldn't afford to fill.