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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- In 16 of Salt Lake County's 18 cities, restaurants with the highest number of critical health code violations during the past two years were small, Utah-based businesses and not national chains, a newspaper reported.
Critical health code violations pose the greatest risks to public health and include infractions such as storing raw meat over fresh vegetables or storing food at a temperature that promotes bacterial growth.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported in its Sunday editions that Salt Lake City eateries had the most critical violations in the county, with 1,077. West Valley City was next with 312 critical violations and Sandy was third with 253 violations.
Some restaurants had dozens of critical violations, including buffets, seafood restaurants and drive-ins.
The newspaper analyzed the data on a city-by-city basis and found that during the past two years, locally owned restaurants collect more critical violations than their chain counterparts.
The finding did not surprise Bryce C. Larsen, director of the Health Department's Bureau of Food Protection.
"National chains have the financial means and resources to do whatever is needed to address safety issues and employee training," Larsen said.
In nine cites, ethnic restaurants had the most violations. That may be because these restaurants have employees who cannot read, write or speak English fluently, said Melva Sine, director of the Utah Restaurant Association.
Employee turnover is another problem for many restaurants.
"There's never a time when you are not trying to educate and train new employees about food-handler practices, new technology or the latest strain of flu," said Sine. Despite the statistics, that doesn't mean you should avoid every neighborhood diner.
"A lot of smaller, family owned restaurants do extremely well," with the health department, said Larsen.
Diners who want to ensure a Salt Lake County restaurant that they eat at is clean and preparing food properly can turn to restaurant-inspection reports for nearly 3,900 food service facilities on the Salt Lake Valley Health Department website.
Consumers can search by restaurant name, address or city as well as through a four-star rating system. The system ranks restaurants on a scale from one to four, based on how well each fared compared with similar establishments. Restaurants that earn four stars are in the top 25 percent of their comparison group.
Consumers can also view the number of critical and noncritical violations a restaurant received during routine inspections. Critical violations are posted in red lettering. Noncritical violations, considered more cosmetic or building related, are listed in blue. The site also shows the results of follow-up inspections.
Since the site was launched, it has had more than 1.5 million page views.
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Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
