Restaurant owners falling short on food-safety concerns, expert says

Preparing food in unsanitary conditions and using unclean surfaces and tools led the way in violations that resulted in the temporary closure of nine Winnipeg restaurants by provincial health inspectors in the past three months.

Since Jan. 30, nine establishments were ordered closed because of unsanitary conditions, while two were shuttered due to rodents or pests, the province said in a recent health protection report.

The list is regularly released and details infractions at restaurants, swimming pools and water recreational facilities and body-modification parlours.

Closures March 2024

 

The report includes restaurants Tandoor House on Keewatin Street and Ming Court on Edmonton Street.

Tandoor House was ordered to close on March 15 due to preparing foods under insanitary conditions, failing to take effective measures against the entry and presence of rodents and failing to ensure foods were protected from contamination.

An employee at Tandoor House said the restaurant is closed for renovations and expected to reopen Wednesday, but wouldn’t comment on the order to close.

Of the nine establishments required to close for unsanitary conditions, four have yet to reopen, the March 22 report said.

Keith Warriner, a professor of food science at the University of Guelph who specializes in food microbiology, said in recent years he’s seen food handlers become increasingly careless when it comes to maintaining safe conditions.

“(Restaurant) owners have been looking at inspectors as educators and they’ll say, ‘Don’t worry, the inspector will come and they’ll tell us what to do’ — but that defeats the whole object,” he said. “The responsibility for food safety is on a food business owner… they’ve got so reliant on people telling them what they have to do that they don’t use their common sense and do it and be the leaders themselves.”

The consequences of cooking in unclean environments can range from minor illness such as a sore stomach or what’s known as the “24-hour flu” to potentially fatal infections including salmonella, listeria and botulism, Warriner said, adding even if someone doesn’t get sick from eating bad food, they can be a carrier of infection to others.

While the standards exist as a safety mechanism, Warriner admits some regulations have become too complex for businesses to follow and is advocating for simplified regulations across the country.

“If you’ve got regulations that need a consultant, or even an inspector to tell you about them, there’s something wrong,” he said. “Inspectors aren’t there to educate, the inspectors are there to inspect.”

However, the professor said the COVID-19 pandemic and recent food-borne illness outbreaks should be a lesson to business owners in safe food handling.

In September 2023 multiple daycares in the Calgary area reported E. coli infections among children, which later led to 356 lab-confirmed and 90 probable cases of the infection. Thirty-eight children and one adult were hospitalized.

Health officials later said meatloaf and vegan loaf meals prepared in a shared kitchen and served at the daycares led to the initial infections. The City of Calgary laid charges against a local catering company.

In November, the Public Health Agency of Canada issued a food recall for two brands of pre-cut cantaloupe traced to a nationwide salmonella outbreak. As of January, the PHAC said the outbreak infected 190 people and killed nine. No infections or deaths were reported in Manitoba.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca