Food safety remains top district priority

This is written in response to the New Haven Register article “Health department missing the mark,” published on March 4, to add additional facts and provide clarity.

First and foremost, food safety is, and has always been, a top priority for the East Shore District Health Department.

The ESDHD, like all local health departments across the state, is steeped in the project of reassessing their food licensing and inspection program to prepare for the long overdue new state FDA Food Code requirement that was scheduled to begin on July 1, 2018. A state memorandum was issued to all local health departments on June 23, 2017, directing us to prepare for the new code starting on Oct. 1, 2017, with a hard implementation date for the new code beginning on July 1, 2018. We created an FDA Food Code safety preparation course and offered free in-person training classes. We also held discussions/ evaluations and conducted a multitown, district-wide customer service survey with our food operations to provide them an opportunity for open and honest dialogue to make business-friendly improvements and technology enhancements to our food-licensing and inspection program.

These FDA training courses were very successful, and drew hundreds of restaurant owners, operators and their staff, with some attendees coming from outside the health district. We were one of the few health departments in the state to offer transitional in-person training classes. The training served several purposes: they were an opportunity to redefine our professional relationships with our food establishment businesses and to provide a forum to understand/ask questions regarding the new 700-plus page food code. Together we moved forward to support the restaurants in their preparation for the implementation.

We implemented a business-friendly approach that assisted our local food businesses and partners for a smooth transition. To do anything less than train and educate, rather than regulate and enforce, would be unfair and a less-than-friendly local business approach. In short, we believed there needed to be a balanced and fair process to the implementation of the FDA Food Code to support Connecticut’ s local food business economy.

The transition has been a very timeconsuming process with hundreds of hours spent by field staff members and administrative employees. We embraced this challenge as an opportunity to improve our organization and assist our local food business stakeholders to advance our food licensing and inspection program.

During these trainings, program development and transition to the new code, we prioritized restaurant inspections based on past food safety performance and held our other inspections until our community understood the new requirements. At the same time, in addition to training our local food businesses, we needed to reclassify and change our inspection database and policies and, therefore, we chose to take this opportunity to enhance our restaurant licensing and inspection program to include an updated online application process with online forms and we now take credit cards for payments.

ESDHD has also been meeting with local health department colleagues across the state for over a year on this matter and we have agreed to share the food database upgrades and cost of mobile technology if funding sources allow and when the FDA Food Code is implemented. In fact, we just signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work collaboratively and share the cost of the database upgrades required for the implementation of the new FDA Food Code, all at our costs with reduced state funding.

The FDA Food Code, while welcomed by Connecticut and its municipalities, is still another unfunded state mandate with no state support or resources; in fact, 20 percent less funding from the state to local health departments is scheduled for the next fiscal year. Over the past 10 years, state funding contributions to local health departments has steady declined, and since 2009, there has been no funding provided to any jurisdiction with a population less than 50,000. With respect to staffing, a health inspector retired, and we have had two staff members on statutory leaves.

The decision I made with my team and board of directors was to implement the new code regulations and educate and assist our local businesses first on this new FDA Food Code before moving full-force with the inspection program that was our local obligation to our communities. Now that the new FDA Food Code implementation is in place and understood by our communities, the ESDHD local health department is ready to move forward with inspections.