Turning up the heat on Philadelphia food-safety inspections

Joining a national movement for food safety, restaurant inspectors in Philadelphia have abandoned the "floors, walls, ceilings" focus that experts say catches chipped paint but often misses real public health threats such as undercooked food and chefs' unwashed hands.

Instead, the city is phasing in a more scientific, "risk-based" approach that emphasizes food workers' knowledge and behavior - do they know how contamination is spread and how to prevent it? - and calls for more frequent inspections of eateries that pose greater risks.

Philadelphia is playing catchup in adopting changes that most counties around here have already made, in some cases many years ago. Yet the city's new approach is expected to mean more inspections of the 12,621 establishments that sell or serve food - four times a year at institutional kitchens, for example - than most places.

Still, this region is hardly progressive compared to places like Toronto, which posts red, yellow or green signs in restaurants, or Los Angeles (A-B-Cs), or Denmark (smiley faces). No county in the Philadelphia region requires restaurants to post full inspection reports on location.

It's not clear that food is any safer when there is greater transparency or even more frequent inspections, "but it does get people to think about food safety," said Doug Powell, an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University who operates BarfBlog.

At the Germantown Home, which prepares three meals a day for the nursing home's 180 residents, a city inspector using the new format found no major violations in June. But the inspector "asked more about personal hygiene, food temperatures, and suggested that I start using test strips daily for the dish machine," said food service director Nicola Burke.

In Center City, an April inspection before the opening of Noble: An American Kitchen found violations in two categories that are considered food-borne-illness risk factors: towels and wash-your-hands reminder signs were not provided at all hand-washing sinks, and the air temperature of an empty walk-in refrigerator was too warm.

Both were corrected and the restaurant passed the next day, said chef-owner Steven Cameron, who had not gone through an inspection under the city's old system but said this one was similar to what he had experienced in three other states.