The week between Christmas and New Year was relatively quiet for Springfield-Greene County Health Department’s food inspections. Out of the 15 routine inspections, more than half of the establishments had no priority violations.
Issues found during inspections fall into either priority or non-priority violations. Priority violations impact the safety of the food, such as cross-contamination between raw and ready-to-eat food, improper food temperature and poor personal hygiene and employee health. Multiple priority violations can lead to an establishment being shut down. Non-priority violations alone do not directly affect food safety, such as dirty floors, sticky tabletops or outside trash cans not being covered.
Food inspections take place one to three times a year, depending on the type of food served, the population served, difficulty of food preparation and past history. Restaurants preparing food from raw ingredients are inspected more often “than convenience stores that serve only non-potentially hazardous foods, such as popcorn and soda,” according to the Springfield-Greene County Health Department…