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Questions and Answers: School Food Safety Inspections
The Contra Costa Grand Jury issued a report in March entitled Delinquent School Food Safety Inspections Place Student Health and Public School Lunch Program Funding at Risk . Here is some information about the issues raised in the report.
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What is the requirement for school food service facility inspection?
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The federal government, as part of the National School Lunch Program, established regulations effective July 2005 requiring that schools have their food service facilities inspected twice a year by a qualified state or local government agency to identify and correct food safety problems in a timely and consistent manner.
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Do the regulations require the County Environmental Health Division to conduct those inspections?
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There is no formal mandate for Local Health Departments to inspect the schools and no funding to conduct the inspections. Contra Costa Health Services’ Environmental Health funding for food safety inspections comes entirely from permit and other fees collected from restaurants and other food service facilities. The County does not collect fees from schools.
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How has the County tried to help schools meet the requirements?
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Environmental Health inspectors have attempted to inspect school food service facilities as frequently as staffing permits. In the 2006-07 school year, staff inspected 77% of the eligible schools. Of the 222 public schools in the Environmental Health inventory, 172 received at least one food safety inspection during the 2006-2007 school year. Of those 172 schools that received free inspections, 40 had more than one food safety inspection. Also in that school year, Environmental Health conducted 10 sessions of food safety training for public school cafeteria workers.
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What barriers have there been to Environmental Health helping the schools?
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For the past several years, Health Services experienced severe staffing shortages because of the difficulty of recruiting employees in the local labor market. The Board of Supervisors recently increased salaries for Environmental Health Specialists to make them more competitive with other Bay Area health departments. The Division is now nearly fully staffed and will be better able to provide two inspections in each school year. Due to rapid growth in the numbers of new food facilities in the county, there are two food inspection districts that are not covered by staff. Two additional positions for Environmental Health Specialist inspectors have been requested. In addition, if Environmental Health must provide each school in the county with two food safety inspections each school year, a third full-time-equivalent inspector position would be required. One inspector position costs about $150,000 per year in salary and benefits. Unless recovered from schools, this cost would have to be spread over about 5,000 permit fee payers, amounting to an average permit fee increase of $30 per year. Such a permit fee increase would require approval of the county Board of Supervisors in a revised fee schedule.
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How does Environmental Health set priorities for inspection?
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During the period of staffing shortages, Environmental Health concentrated its resources on food facilities with the greatest risk to the health and safety of our county. Those were full service restaurants and other full time food facilities, especially those with a history of, or having the greatest risk for, a food-borne illness outbreak. We have not had a food-borne illness outbreak in a school food service facility in recent memory.
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For more information, contact Environmental Health at 925-692-2500 or by e-mail to cocoeh@hsd.cccounty.us
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