So what's the big secret?

24.oct.06
Halifax Chronicle Herald
Paul Schneidereit
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/536339.html

When it comes to food safety, consumers, according to this column, have a right to be informed.
The Canadian Food Inspection System - a body formed on agreement of all provinces - states on its website that its guiding principles include both the public's right to know and governments' responsibility to provide health and food-safety information to consumers. Restaurants are identified as one of many sources of food.
Seems clear enough - and certainly laudable - to me. Of course, all governments have this unfunny way of making impressive-sounding statements about, for instance, openness - as well as many other things - and then ignoring their own words when it comes to deeds. In the case of Nova Scotia and the debate over allowing easier public access to food-safety inspection reports on restaurants, so far the government's rhetoric about informing consumers falls far short of what it's apparently prepared to do.
Let's be clear here. The current system for informing the public about restaurant food-safety inspections is a joke in this province. Say you want to go to a restaurant, but wonder how it has fared in its food-safety inspections. Can you find out online?
Nope. Can you find out at the restaurant itself? Nope, unless you ask someone and buy their reply. So what does the government say you can do? Contact its offices and ask, but only for up to three establishments.
Government claims that the public should just "trust" that the system is working well - no need to worry here, folks, keep eating - are an insult to the intelligence. Numerous letters to the editor these past weeks made that clear. Don't politicians read polls?
Food-borne illnesses are estimated to sicken 11 to 13 million Canadians every year. Food poisoning is a contributing factor in perhaps 300 deaths annually. Though it's difficult to cite an exact percentage, restaurants and other out-of-the-home food sources contribute to that total. Studies by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration show improper holding times and temperatures for food, poor personal hygiene by employees and contaminated food-touching surfaces, or a failure to protect against such contamination, are all significant problems in the restaurant industry. Three-quarters of staff in full-service restaurants, for example, were non-compliant with a practice as basic as hand-washing.
According to Ben Chapman, a researcher with the Food Safety Network based at the University of Guelph, there are now about 120 jurisdictions across North America that require restaurants to display their food-safety inspection reports, as well as make them available online. That number has grown steadily over the past three years. If a jurisdiction's reports are computerized - as Nova Scotia's are, apparently - Chapman says there shouldn't be any great cost to make them available on the Internet.
Chapman also made some other points worth noting (yeah, Ben -- dp). Opening up public access to food-safety inspection reports is fundamentally the right thing to do, he says, but by itself will likely not make restaurants any safer for diners. Greater transparency has to be part of a system-wide approach to safe dining that includes, critically, programs that train restaurant employees on proper food-safety techniques and hiring adequate numbers of inspectors to develop "quality" relationships with individual eateries. So the best practice isn't just more inspections, or just posting inspections more publicly, but one that seeks to develop a true partnership on food safety - based, appropriately enough, on knowledge - among restaurants, government and the public.
Nova Scotia, instead of comparing itself to jurisdictions doing what it's doing - which can always be found - should instead be aiming to be part of the leading edge, continent-wide, in developing such an approach. 
Rather than another black mark on the government's reputation, being proactive on this file -- emulating the kind of approach Chapman discussed, including greater public disclosure -- could instead gain the Tories some well-deserved kudos.