Two inspections found unsafe food, including old food, at a Fort Lauderdale area grocer
How did an Oakland Park grocery store respond to a failed state inspection with violations that included old food and food kept in a bacteria-breeding manner? By not correcting or repeating several violations on Tuesday’s re-inspection.
This repetition of poor food safety occurred at Latino Supermarket, 335 NE 44th St., first visited by Florida Department of Agriculture inspectors Briana Albritton and Novelette Williams on June 7 and checked again on Tuesday by Williams and Tasheka Edmond.
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The Department of Agriculture inspects packaged food sellers from supermarkets, wholesale and retail bakeries, food storage, processing and distribution facilities. Unlike restaurant inspectors from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, Ag Department inspectors can’t close down an establishment for getting the lowest inspection grade, “Re-Inspection Required.”
Inspectors can, however, issue Stop Sale orders on food and Stop Use Orders on equipment and areas. Enough of those in the wrong places and opening a store might be impossible or, at best, fruitless.
The June 7 inspection
Here are some of the violations found during the June 7 inspection of the grocer in an Oakland Park strip mall:
▪ This could cause your fish to have a sanitized flavor as well as make you sick. “Food employee failed to clean the three-compartment sink after cleaning dishes, then prepared fish (in the sink).”
▪ “A food employee washed hands for less than 10 seconds without soap.” So, it’s not really washing hands, but rinsing them.
▪ “A food employee failed to sanitize pans and utensils after cleaning.”
▪ In the backroom, “the shelves inside the walk-in cooler are soiled.”
▪ On the shelves, they found dented cans of kidney beans, ducal negros and sardines. Each got hit with a Stop Sale.
▪ A Stop Use Order hit a kitchen reach-in cooler that was 48 degrees inside. That makes it worthless for keeping food under 41 degrees. Which is part of the reason several prepared foods weren’t kept either below 41 degrees or above 135 degrees.
▪ You’re not supposed to have food in prep areas or deli areas for sale longer than seven days. A reach-in cooler had 8-day-old cooked oxtail, combined chicharron that had been there 15 days and a bucket of pickles that was 27 days old. Stop Sale for each, and tossed.
▪ “Sponges used in contact with cleaned and sanitized or in-use food-contact surfaces.” Sponges used to clean pots, pans and utensils in the kitchen area. Sponges retain some of the debris and bacteria they scrub. That’s one reason you should run them through a dishwasher cycle as often as you can during their limited lives.
▪ “Non-food grade plastic containers used to store raw and cooked meats in a reach-in cooler.”
▪ In the storage area, the handles on the ice coop and mallet in the ice machine were touching the ice, which means the dirt and grime from any hands touching those handles is touching the ice. Same theory for why the the handle of the spoon shouldn’t be touching the sugar at the coffee station.
The June 27 re-inspection
After getting dinged on June 7 for using sponges to clean pots, pans and utenisls, Latino Supermarket repeated the violation.
Also repeated: storage of the ice scoop and mallet in the ice machine with the handle touching the ice and the spoon in the sugar container at the ice station. Other discoveries:
▪ The shelves inside the walk-in cooler were still soiled.
▪ At least the old food decreased from three types to one. The cooked oxtails in the reach-in cooler were 10 days old.
▪ Cut tomatoes were 20 degrees too warm. They got thrown into the garbage with cut cabbage (18 degrees too warm) and white cheese (three to five degrees too warm).
▪ “Non-food grade plastic containers were used to store raw and cooked meats in a reach-in cooler.”
Latino Supermarket received a second “Re-Inspection Required” result.
