The district inspects food complaints and does routine inspections at local restaurants on almost a daily basis.
“There are days where I may come in, and there will be four or five complaints, and there are times when a week or so will pass without any,” food protection supervisor George Highsmith said.
“But we also take care of general inspections. We visit most restaurants every quarter to make sure they are complying with general guidelines when it comes to handling and preparing food, and we check for general sanitation issues.”
In some ways, Highsmith and the other inspectors are the food police.
Last week, after visiting a Temple fast-food restaurant a man complained that he found gum in a hamburger -Highsmith went out the next day.
“When I visited the restaurant, I talked to the manager who told me that the workers don’t chew gum,” Highsmith said. “I was also able to watch a videotape, from when the hamburger was made, and it didn’t appear as though anything fell into it or that the worker was chewing gum.
“It’s just one of those things we check on,” he said. “Unless there’s definitive proof something happened, there’s not much you can do - you read about cases all the time where people plant things in food - like the finger in the chili.
“Sometimes we’ll get complaints about people getting sick from food,” Highsmith said. “Those are actually easier to document because sometimes people will get sick in bulk.”
A general inspection
On Monday afternoon, Sarah Little, a member of the department, inspected Bush’s Chicken on South 31st Street in Temple - with good results.
“There are no problems here,” Little said following her half-hour inspection. “It’s nice to visit a place (like Bush’s). Sometimes you run into places that have a number of problems, and it’s not a lot of fun.”
Little inspected everywhere she could in the restaurant, starting with making sure every worker had a state-issued food-handling card that indicates they have been educated in food handling techniques to reduce the risk of foodborne illness outbreaks.
After checking the cards, Little made her way to the back of the restaurant, where she checked the sinks and coolers, making sure the sanitizer used to clean dishes was the right concentration, and checking the seals in the refrigerators.
She then checked the chicken in the coolers. “It’s 39.8 degrees (Fahrenheit),” said Little, sticking a thermometer into the raw chicken. “That’s good - it must be stored at temperatures of 41 degrees or colder.
“As far as checking the refrigerators go, we also make sure they’re sealed properly, and food is being stored properly. We don’t want things sitting on the floor,” Little said.
Little then visited the kitchen area, and took the temperature of several hot foods, including mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese.
“Everything has to be heated so that (the food) has a temperature above 135 degrees,” Little said. “It doesn’t matter how they hold it, whether it’s a hot food line, or in another storage area.”
After all of the hot food tests came back positive, Little checked the temperature of chicken that was freshly fried. “I need to make sure that the meat that was just cooked has a core temperature of 165 degrees,” she said.
While keeping an eye open for workers wearing gloves and hats, she then checked the restaurant’s soda fountain, lobby and bathroom.
“I look for general cleanliness issues,” said Little, who mentioned the soda fountain, while talking to Bush’s manager and co-owner Penny Gallegos. “You’d be surprised - sometimes you find that people never bother to clean the knobs.”
Gallegos said the knobs for the fountain were changed daily.
“This was a pretty easy inspection,” Little said.
“I know they’re going to come every couple months,” Gallegos said. “But I never know the exact date. They just show up - I’m never really in contact with them.”
Gallegos said that when she thinks the inspectors are going to show up, she takes about two weeks to make sure “sure everything is in top shape.”
“But we keep things really clean, and make sure (our workers) know what they’re doing all of the time,” she said.
As for Little, she loves her job.
“Every day is different and I really feel like we’re an important service to the community,” she said.
Highsmith echoed Little.
“We do the best we can,” he said. “We can’t actually take the food that people have complaints about - that would be after the fact - but we do what we can to help prevent problems and investigate existing issues.”
Highsmith said most people who make complaints do it about “bad food.”
For more information, visit www.bellcountyhealth.org.
