Purpose: This study examined health inspection data from casual dining restaurants in LA in a one-year period (January 1 - December 31, 2011) to identify frequency and types of food code violations occurring in the restaurants and compare differences of food code violations between ethnic and non-ethnic restaurants.
Methods: Restaurant inspection data from ten parishes in LA with highest number of population was derived from Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals’ website. The information was copied and pasted into Excel spreadsheets and converted to SPSS for data analyses. T-test was applied to compare food safety performance between ethnic and non-ethnic restaurants.
Results: A total of 4,393 restaurant inspection reports were retrieved from 756 restaurants (535 non-ethnic and 221 ethnic) in ten parishes. Of 7,481 inspections, most of them was routine-driven (n = 6614, 58%), followed by complaint (n = 506, 8%) and re-inspection (n = 306, 4%). On average, each restaurant violated 3.64 critical food codes and 8.20 non-critical food codes in a year period. Top three violated codes were “Food contact surfaces and utensils are not clean to sight and touch” (0.35 violation/restaurant), “Potentially hazardous food held for more than 24 hours is not date marked”(0.18 violation/restaurant) and “Food contact surface was not washed, rinsed and sanitized” (0.18 violation/restaurant). Results indicated that ethnic restaurants have significantly higher critical food code violations (3.21 vs. 1.51; P < 0.01) and non-critical food code violations (9.40 vs. 7.71; P < 0.01) than non-ethnic restaurants.
Significance: Food safety educators could utilize the results to develop food safety training materials that targeted at ethnic and non-ethnic restaurants in LA. Restaurant managers could use the data to improve food safety performance in their establishments.