The New York Times has an excellent story today about food health inspection processes and scoring systems throughout the country: "A Stir Over Plan to Grade New York City’s Restaurants". The news peg is that next year the City of New York is moving from a number score to a letter-scoring system, and they are going to require that restaurants post the score in their restaurants.
There was a ton of good stuff in this article about the current state of inspections across the country. One issue is that raw inspection reports are widely available all over the Web, but the results of hearings– which is where the restaurant owner has a chance to respond to any violations– are not. As you can imagine, that rubs restaurant owners the wrong way, as they indictment is always public, but their side of the story is not.
To Mr. Bookman, of the restaurant association, “That is a violation of any standard of due process.”
The department acknowledges the issue but does not “see a way to have an instant adjudication,” said Mr. Marcus, the associate health commissioner.
Not fair, flat-out. Public health agencies should publish the results of hearings along with the results of inspections.
