Eeuuww ...

[Robin Garr]

62 Percent of Restaurant Workers Don't Wash Their Hands After Handling Raw Beef
And seven other disgusting new facts about restaurant food.
—By Dana Liebelson |Mother Jones | Fri Dec. 13, 2013

About 3,000 Americans die every year from foodborne diseases, and more than 120,000 are hospitalized. Recognizing that restaurants and delis are the source of more than half of foodborne illness outbreaks, health specialists for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) went inside the kitchens of hundreds of restaurants across 10 states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Iowa, Rhode Island, and Tennessee) to determine which practices could be making people sick. They released their findings this month.

The results aren't pretty. Many workers lack basic knowledge about food safety, don't wash their hands enough, and serve undercooked meat. Employees commonly show up to work when they're vomiting, because they fear losing pay and leaving the restaurant understaffed. ...

Read the full story online ...
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/ ... g-bacteria

Robin, you know I am usually on the good side of things. And, Pumpkin actually subscribes to Mother Jones so I get to see it a lot. I'm sorry to say it but they are yellow journalists.

In this case, of those 8 things, 4 of them are temperature-related. It is well-known that government standards for cooking meat are way too high so violations of those rules are commonplace. Unless you like all your meat gray and tough?

I am sympa with the other 4. Gotta be careful with raw meat and, frankly, restaurants have to pay their workers better so they don't come in sick.

Not sure what the point is on #2. When I worked in restaurants, we did not separate cutting boards based on task or food type but we did bleach them after each use.

[Robin Garr]

Not sure what the point is on #2. When I worked in restaurants, we did not separate cutting boards based on task or food type but we did bleach them after each use.

Mike, I think that's current wisdom, perhaps a belt-and-suspenders rule, but also based on increasing concern over industrial agriculture and the many recent outbreaks of meat- and poultry-related e. coli, salmonella and worse. I know a local restaurant supply house (also open to the public) offers a variety of color-coded cutting boards and sheets, and there appears to be a standardized color system - red for meat, yellow for poultry, green for veg and so on. Makes it particularly easy not to make a mistake in a bad-case scenario where a worker didn't do the bleach job or didn't clean the wares well.

Responding also to Jeff's comment, yes, a lot of this stuff is well-known and most careful people follow it, but the fact is, the restaurant industry includes fast-food, too, and workers at all levels of skill and motivation.

All that being said, I have no plan to stop eating out! "That which does not kill us makes us strong."

Interesting, and although it's certainly a good idea I still don't see switching boards as all that important. There are plenty of other sources for salmonella and such besides chicken. If a restaurant is not properly sanitizing their cutting boards after each use, then they have big problem whether they're switching them or not.

[Robin Garr]

Oh, I agree. I'm not particularly defending it, just saying that it seems to be an evolving practice in commercial kitchens. Perhaps lawyer-driven? We actually bought a set of plastic work sheets in full color code, not for the intended use but because they were pretty. I don't like them for cutting, but they make great work spaces and, when rolled up, impromptu funnels. And when we re-did our kitchen in faux dark gray granite, I was so bereft at losing my lovable old 1970's sunny goldenrod yellow formica counter tops that I bought a big yellow (plastic) board to use both as a work board and a bright happy spot.