Red or green? Look behind the sticker with 15 questions with an Environmental Health Department inspector

May 4—It's always busy for inspectors at the city of Albuquerque's Environmental Health Department. Seven inspectors cover all the food establishments in the city — close to 5,000 permits in total.

One of those inspectors, Alec Woody, and Environmental Health Department supervisor Melise Pederson sat down with the Journal to answer 15 burning questions about the food safety program.

Woody, who has a background in the restaurant industry, has worked at the department for almost a year.

"This was kind of a natural progression for me," Woody said. "We do work with the restaurants ... and the staff, kind of coaching and training, so that background within the food industry kind of helped me into this position where I can kind of speak the language."

Pederson, who started her career in integrated pest management, has worked at the city for almost 10 years, starting first in the Urban Biology Division. She became a supervisor of the food safety program at the Environmental Health department three years ago.

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This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Q: How often are restaurants inspected?

AW: "It kind of depends on the operation. There's different factors that would lead to different levels of inspection timelines."

MP: "Each facility is assigned what we call a risk category ... so, a low risk would be something that just sells, like, prepackaged food that's shelf stable, but then when you get into actual food prep and food handling, those places get inspected more often.

Then, what we call a very high risk would be, like, a facility that serves at-risk populations or immunocompromised (populations), so day cares and nursing homes, those types of places, and then anybody who's doing what we call a 'special process' in their food operations. ... Like, sushi is a high risk facility that would be visited more often."

Q: Are there more red tags lately?

MP: "One thing that we see this time of year is increased pest activity. So just like we see in our houses, you know, this is kind of when cockroaches come in from the garage — the same thing is happening in restaurants. And so when we go in, we're seeing that increased pest activity throughout the city, and it's affecting them just like it would affect our personal houses. Because insects and mice are an immediate closure, that's why you're seeing a lot of reds.

Looking at some of our numbers, we aren't really that off from like pre-COVID times of the number of closures we've done from the beginning of the year to this time of year. So we tend to see trends like in the spring and maybe in the fall with insect and rodent activity, but nothing particularly out of the norm."

Q: What violations will automatically bring a restaurant into the red?

AW: "We do only have the four things that would do that, that would be kind of an automatic. Those are what we call like an imminent health hazard: so we have a sewage backup, infestation, whether that's you know, mice, insects, things like that, if we have no available hot water, or if we have a lack of refrigeration."

Q: How can one restaurant be in both the red and green category on the weekly report? How can they get back into compliance so quickly?

AW: "Where you see both the red and the green is that we've come back and done that re-inspection. And so part of it is kind of seeing that they've kind of followed up, and they've actually taken those steps to correct any sort of issues. ... We do ask to see, you know, records to show that they have made these repairs, when we go out and do their re-inspections."

MP: "It's really the facility doing a lot of work, right. When we come in and they're closed, they're losing business and people can't work. And so they're working very quickly overnight, sometimes through the night, doing cleaning and having their pest control come out and do emergency pest control operations or emergency plumbing. So we've had, you know, plumbers out there with our inspector at like 10 o'clock at night, working to fix the issues that are going on."

Q: How long do restaurants have to return to compliance?

MP: "So, we give them five days ... that you can be in the status before we come back. Or you can call us earlier if you think that you've fixed it and we'll come out and reinspect for you. And so as long as we go back and we don't see, you know, live infestation in the facility, and we see that they've had pest control records, then we can feel comfortable opening them."

Q: Once a restaurant is in the red, how does the department make sure they continue following health and safety standards?

AW: "Well, for us, it's kind of continuing on our scheduled inspection timeline. And you know, a lot of the times the facilities want to work with us and show that they've actively doing things. They send us their reports and kind of follow-up with us and send us documentation as well. So it's that back and forth, working with them and making sure that we have that communication."

MP: "We do also require whenever a facility is downgraded or closed for an imminent health hazard, we require a food safety training for all of their staff. And so our staff will go out there and target that food safety training to the violations that closed them, so we do that for all of those facilities in order to help them prevent this from happening in the future. Obviously, some things you can't prevent, like a sewage backup, and it's just a maintenance issue.

"But we do teach them how to, then, address that before we come in and find it. The other way that we keep on track of facilities is obviously we respond to complaints that we receive. So if we had a facility that was downgraded or closed recently, and we continue to get complaints through the 311 system, we follow up on that, we keep them on our radar."

AW: "I do want to point out that we do also offer that training program to new businesses as well, to get in and get them started (off) on the right foot."

Q: What was the impact of COVID-19 on the department?

MP: "There's a little bit of a misconception that during COVID, we stopped inspections. We didn't. We did shift to doing some virtual stuff, and inspectors did have to shift focus to enforcing the public health ordinances. ... Something that did come out of that is those virtual inspections, (which) we can still use, like when nursing homes are having outbreaks. We don't have to send an inspector in and get exposed to that. But we have that virtual piece in our toolbag to now use on a regular basis when we have those things come up."

Q: Is there anything diners can look for at restaurants to protect themselves?

AW: "The diners who are going to these restaurants, they can look at our inspection reports and kind of see what issues they've had, and see what those violations actually kind of represent. That would be my best way to look at that."

MP: "You can look for imminent health hazard things on your own and then report them to us. You know, sewage backup is something that you can smell when you enter a facility, and so we would discourage, if you're smelling sewage in the restaurant, to not eat there. ... Obviously if you see cockroaches crawling around or things like that, you know, I would avoid that spot. Call us, again. Anytime we get a complaint that seems like an imminent health hazard, we go on the same day that we get that complaint to make sure that we're following up on it immediately."

Q: Do food trucks get inspected?

AW: "Yes, absolutely they are."

Q: Why are stores like Big 5, Home Depot, etc. included in the inspection report?

MP: "In Albuquerque, anybody who sells food for human consumption gets inspected, and that includes stores that just sell prepackaged candy bars and drinks. ... They're going to be very low risk, so we're only going to be looking at them probably once a year.

"The inspections are briefer, but we're mostly looking at storage and packaging, making sure nothing is like, overly expired, and that they're not storing it with stuff dripping on it, that type of thing. So it is a simpler inspection. But it's still important in terms of public health and keeping the community safe when it comes to food that they're going to consume."

Q: Do grocery stores get inspected?

MP: "Grocery stores are a different sort of animal. They have lots of permits. Their bakery will have one permit, and their deli will have one permit, and so forth ... and we've definitely had issues with prepackaged grocery store type stuff, you know, with infestation and with sewage backup and all of that.

"So it is important for us to be able to access those facilities and make sure that the main places where people are getting food to take home are also safe, you know, as well as when they're gonna go out to eat and enjoy a dinner out."

Why does Albuquerque have its own food safety program (outside of the state program)?

MP: "In New Mexico, there's three food jurisdictions. And so the state covers almost all of New Mexico, but Albuquerque and Bernalillo County both have what we call 'home rule'. And so that's where we have set up our own and it's not just when it comes to food, it's like duplication of other entities as well, where we have our own ordinances that cover the same things that the state does. And so Bernalillo County, they have their own food protection group that covers the unincorporated areas of the county. And then we cover the in-city jurisdiction. And so you'll end up with these pockets where like UNM, and CNM and APS. Those are all under state jurisdiction, even though they're within Albuquerque."

Q: Do you still go out to eat?

MP: "I still go to eat a lot. I don't cook very much, so I do eat out a lot. And again, having knowledge of the reports that we've had, I go to places that are in the green — even places that have been in the red in the past. Again, if it was a plumbing issue, and we've reopened them, those places are now safe, so as long as they'd come back into the green, I'm comfortable eating there and ordering from there.

"I do a lot of GrubHub."

AW: "I still definitely go out to eat."

Q: Would your own kitchen pass an inspection?

MP: "So my background is not in food. And so when I took on this position, I definitely noticed myself doing more food safety at home. And so I took a lot of things away. You know, I used to hear these guys around Thanksgiving, always talking about taking the temperature of the turkey and, you know, making sure that everything was safe. ... Now that I'm doing this job and I see the reports and I pay more attention I brought a lot of that home. Although you know, because I have pets at home, my kitchen wouldn't necessarily pass inspection, and there's different standards, obviously, for commercial kitchens serving a large population versus just cooking for ourselves at home. But there's a lot of the stuff that you know, when you're reading the reports you can take that home, like 'Did I cook my roast to the right temperature? Did I sanitize my stuff between, you know, cutting chicken and doing salad? So it's really good to take those pieces home and to learn it and get your kitchen to where you know you're not going to get your family sick on Thanksgiving."

Q: Anything else Albuquerque eaters should know?

MP: "I think there's like a misconception that our inspectors go out looking to close places. And as you know, as government employees and public servants, it's not what we're doing.

We want to see Albuquerque thrive. We care about Albuquerque and its citizens. And we want to see businesses do well. And so when we're going out there, we're really going out with an attitude of education and trying to help them correct things before it turns into an imminent health hazard. And so yeah, we're definitely not out there trying to close people. We want to see people doing well, we want to see the report on the green all the time."

Report potential violations to 311 or at https://www.cabq.gov/environmentalhealth/food-safety/report-food-complaint

Restaurant inspections Christmas-style: a bit of red and green this week

It was a near-perfect report this week, but a visit from some furry four-legged foodies...

May 4, 2023 1:44PM