What's Behind the Kitchen Door?

Have you seen this video? 

It is the famous undercover KCBS news story from 1997 that exposed the dirty truth about restaurant sanitation in Los Angeles.  The footage shows cockroaches crawling over food, rat infestations, spoiled food, and disgusting and unsafe practices by the people preparing the meals.  Workers are seen washing their hands over meat that is defrosting in a sink.  An employee bathroom goes for weeks without ever having soap for washing hands.  Produce is seen rotting to the point that it turns to mush when picked up.  Employees are caught on tape eating from customer’s plates as they prepare the food.  One clip shows a man licking his fingers and continuing to use his hands to prepare a meal.  In another, a man sneezes and continues preparing food.  The conditions exposed in the news report are scary to say the least. 

            The report received a lot of attention and created political pressure to make changes to the existing county health inspection process.  In the days following the report, 18 restaurants were forced to close their doors while they made improvements.  Restaurants that had repeatedly failed inspections or had not been inspected in years came under scrutiny.  The most interesting part is that many of the restaurants were well-established LA landmarks.  Places like Canter’s Deli on Fairfax were among the 18 restaurants that were closed.  In fact, Canter’s was one of the restaurants that were caught by undercover cameras in the news report with rodent droppings, cockroaches, and a history of hygiene violations.  There was a sense of shock across the city by the findings. 

            In addition, the news reports exposed faults within the county’s health department.  While the county claimed that there was simply not enough funding to efficiently conduct inspections, the report found that the health department had millions of dollars left over at the end of each year.  In fact, the millions in surplus money was amounted through fees charged to restaurants by the department for conducting inspections. 

            The changes made to the health inspections process have been effective.  Restaurants are now subjected to a minimum of 4 random inspections per year.  It also became mandatory for the results of the inspections to be posted at the entrance with a letter grade.  Having first hand experience dealing with restaurant health inspections I can safely say that while not perfect, it is very easy for a restaurant to not earn an A from a range of violations that don’t affect sanitation.  With that said, even with the new inspection system a health inspector recently expressed her concern of eating at some restaurants. 

            Seeing the news report creates concern over the hygiene level of the food being served from mobile food trucks.  With very little oversight and not being inspected like normal restaurants I would not be surprised to see similar findings in this industry.  While their changing locations make it difficult for health inspectors to conduct inspections, it is more important than ever to tackle this problem.  Additionally, it would create more consumer confidence in the quality of food being served off these trucks.