EDITORIAL: Knowing where you are eating - (Ottawa Citizen)
July 7, 2008 – 8:46 pmFoodborne diseases are a significant public health problem. The American Journal of Preventative Medicine reported last month that 76 million Americans fall ill because of bad food each year. The Public Health Agency of Canada says that in this country there are some 11 million annual episodes of foodborne disease.
As the researchers who conducted the American study noted, the public is largely unaware of inspection regimes — we don’t know how often restaurants are inspected, nor do we understand the health consequences of eating at places that are assigned bad grades.
Posting restaurant health inspections online would be a good step in educating the public on these matters. Consumers show tremendous interest in accessing health inspection websites that already exist. The very first day New York City posted inspections online, in 2000, the website received thousands of hits.
Interestingly, there’s evidence that when local authorities post online the results of inspections, not […]
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http://www.extension.iastate.edu/foodsafety/news/fsnews.cfm?newsid=27106
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