- Hello, I'm John Silcox with the
Fairfax County Health Department,
and I'm here with Diana Rodriguez.
She's one of our environmental health specialists,
and we've got a real treat for you today.
We're gonna take you behind the scenes to show you what
it's like when Diana does a food service
establishment inspection.
And today we're here at IL creations which is the food
vendor here at the government center building.
And they're getting ready for lunch service,
you can probably
see behind us that there's some work going on, and getting
ready to serve lunch.
So we're here at a good time to kinda go through the
process of what it's like when Diana, you do
a service establishment inspection.
So, thank you for joining us today, if you have comments or
questions as we go along, please post them to Facebook.
We're simulcasting today,
so we're both on the county's
Facebook and on the Health Department's Facebook, so we hope
you will like and share our video.
Post comments and questions, and we'll try to address them
as we can, and without further ado, Diana, do you wanna take
us through what it's like to do an inspection?
- Yes. Thank you, John.
A little information first.
Well, the health department inspects over 3,400 restaurants.
now these restaurants vary from a nursing home, to a
coffee shop.
Now, a nursing home may receive
three inspections because they serve a highly susceptible
population, whereas a coffee shop may only receive one
inspection, because they're not cooking any food.
But the majority of our restaurants actually receive two
inspections a year.
Now all of our inspections are unannounced, and a routine
inspection could last
up to two hours.
Now, the common thread amongst our inspections is that we
focus on risk factors for a food borne illness, so that's
what I'm gonna be doing today,
talking about
five risk factors.
Now typically, when we do an inspection, we always identify
the certified food manager.
That person is the one that we walk around with as we
conduct our inspection.
So today, I'll give you a shortened version of what a
food safety inspection looks like.
Now, I am here at the hand sink, and this brings us to our
first risk factor, which is poor personal hygiene.
So,
we always start our inspection by washing our hands, so
that's exactly what I'm gonna be doing now.
So as I'm washing my hands, I always check to make sure
that the hand sink has paper towels, that they have soap,
warm water, hand washing sign, and a trash receptacle.
And we really wanna scrub to wash our hands for about
20 seconds, that'll reduce that risk factor.
Now another component of that risk factor is glove use.
You wanna make sure that staff is using their gloves,
instead of using their bare hands to touch products
that are ready to eat.
Now these products could be an item such as a sandwich,
we need to make sure that they are
always wearing the gloves.
The third component of that, is what we call employee
health policy.
Now this is a discussion that we have with the managers
to make sure that they train their staff to know and
recognize and report symptoms and illnesses that are part
of the food borne illness.
So, to my right I have a three compartment sink.
And that brings me to my next risk factor, which is
using contaminated equipment.
Now at home, we definitely don't have a three
compartment sink, and we also may not sanitize
our dishware.
But, a restaurant, they have to, because they're serving
the general public.
So, the way they properly do this is
by having a wash, a rinse, and a sanitizer.
So their wash consists of water and soap,
their rinse is water to remove that soapy film,
and the third compartment is the sanitizer.
Which is what we check.
So here, they have a sanitizing test kit, it's a color
changing strip, and it lets us know about the concentration
of the chemical.
In this case, they're using quaternary ammonia, so we
wanna make sure that it's at the right concentration.
Because too low, and it's not doing anything.
Too much, and now they've created a chemical residue
that can make somebody sick.
So what we do is we dip the paper in the solution, for
10 seconds, and it'll change color.
We compare that color against a color chart.
So we see here, that they're doing pretty good.
They're between the 200 and 400 parts per million volume,
which is exactly where we want them to be.
So, we've cleaned our hands, now have clean equipment,
let's talk about food.
- So Diana, let me stop you just there, and remind our
audience if you're just joining us, we are kinda behind
the scenes at a food establishment inspection.
You know, as Diana's taking us through
the different things that she does, and the things
that she looks for when she's doing this inspection.
So, we hope you're learning a lot, and if you have
comments or questions, as always, post them to our Facebook
page, we're simulcasting today
on the county Facebook as well as the Health Department's
Facebook, so please like and share our video.
And Diana, why don't you take us to the next place
- Next location.
- For your inspection.
- So our next risk factor is improper temperature control.
So we're gonna make our way
to the walk-in cooler.
And as we know in a restaurant, food goes through many
processes, they need to receive the food at a certain
temperature, they need to keep it cold at
a certain temperature.
They need to cool
down food and keep that time temperature relationship.
So, we walk into this refrigerator, and we wanna make sure
that
the ambien temperature is
41 degrees below.
So, come on in.
And we see that every refrigeration unit has to have
a thermometer, and they do.
And like I said, the magic number here is 41 degrees.
However, more importantly is making sure that the food
inside the walk-in cooler is maintaining a temperature
of 41 degrees.
So here I have my thermometer, I've already taken the
liberty to wash, rinse, and sanitize it.
Well, I'll just go ahead and clean it up with an alcohol
swab one more time.
Before I take the temperature.
So this is chicken salad, and we see that it's definitely
maintaining the cold temperature, at 38 degrees,
which is perfect.
So while we're in the walk-in cooler, also look at several
different ways that they store food.
So we wanna make sure they're preventing
cross contamination.
And another reason why we look is because we wanna know
what kind of food they have on hand.
Because that brings us to our next risk factor.
Unapproved food sources.
- Diana, let's stop there and just remind our audience that
we're taking a behind the scenes look at a food
establishment inspection.
I'm John Silcox with the Health Department, you're
Diana Rodriguez, and she's showing us all the different
things that she looks for when she does an inspection,
and Diana, I know that you spend almost every week doing
some of the inspections.
How many do you typically do.
- Well, it varies.
Typically, we try to get three done in a day, so between
10 and 15 is what we strive to do a week.
- Why don't you continue on with the tour, and show us
the other things that you look for.
- Absolutely.
So, as I was saying, we need to know where this food
is coming from.
And we need to make sure that the food comes from a
reputable source, such as, an establishment that's
permitted by the USDA or the FDA.
Now, there are certain items that require further
documentations, such as shelf stock.
And we'll also review that, as well.
So as we walk through the kitchen, we always wanna
look at the cleanliness of the facility.
Which is also something that we're checking
during our result.
And now that we're here in the front, we see that Chef Flora
is cooking, so that brings us to our last risk factor,
which is proper cooking.
Now we know
it's important to cook food properly because we wanna kill
the bacteria that's in the food.
Now, every protein item has a certain food requirement.
In this case, chicken needs to be cooked to 165 degrees
in order to eliminate that dangerous bacteria.
Now, every restaurant needs to have a thermometer.
And they need to use it.
Well, we'll go ahead and take a temperature to make sure
that this risk factor has indeed been reduced.
Hello, Chef Flora, how are you?
- Okay, and you?
- I'm very well, thank you.
I'm gonna take a temperature of the chicken here.
- Okay, no problem.
- And we see that that's being reached because this item
is fully cooked at 190 degrees and above.
So, let's say a restaurant would like to hold their food,
instead of immediately serving it.
Well.
That brings us to our next temperature requirement
over here, this is what we call hot holding.
Where a food item is held after being cooked.
And we wanna make sure that it's also reducing that
risk factor of the
proper temperature control, by maintaining a temperature
that's 135 degrees and above.
So we'll go ahead and take a temperature of that.
Very good.
And we see that they are, we see that the temperature's
160 degrees and rising.
So, at the end of our inspection, we talk about what our
findings with the managers to review any information,
and we also wanna make sure that the violations are
corrected on site.
If they can't be corrected, we'll schedule a followup to
make sure that the restaurant is handling any of these
risk factors the right way.
So, I hope today has been very helpful in giving you
an insider
track on what a food safety inspection would look like.
- Diana, thank you so much for taking us on this
behind the scenes tour of service establishment inspection.
I think we all learned a lot about what goes into
an inspection, and how you conduct this work.
We hope you found it interesting and informative, as always
we appreciate your attention and we hope you'll like
and share our video.
If you have any comments or questions, please leave them
on our Facebook page.
We're simulcasting today on both the county's Facebook,
and the Health Department Facebook, so either one.
Please leave your comments and questions and share
our video.
Thank you so much for this time today, Diana.
We appreciate the information, and if you have other
questions or want more information on our safety
inspection program, you can go to our website,
which is fairfaxcounty.gov/hd/food.
Where you can get more information, also you can get links
to restaurant inspection reports if you're interested in
finding out how your favorite restaurant is faring
in the latest inspections.
So, all that information on our website, or you can also
call our program at any time if you have questions,
or want to find out more information.
That number is 703-246-2444.
So thanks again for joining us.
Have a great rest of the day.